Super Micro threatened with Nasdaq de-listing
Knives falls fast. Last night Super Micro was notified that it faces Nasdaq de-listing if it does not submit a “compliance plan.” That should be easy, they can just tack it on to the earnings report that they must be furiously working on with their brand new auditor…
Super Micro Shares Plummet as Nasdaq Delisting Looms
Miro slashes workforce by 275
Online whiteboarding tool Mira is dry-erasing 275 people from its workforce (18% of total) according to The Information. The company’s last valuation was 17.5 bil and has an annual recurring revenue of over $500 million.
In an internal memo, CEO Andrey Khusid had this to say:
“Our internal organizations have become too complex, we have too many layers, some duplications in roles, and candidly, we’re not set up to execute on our strategy with the speed and flexibility that success will require.”
Productivity Startup Miro To Lay Off Roughly 18% of Staff
Super Micro blasted by their auditors on the way out
Wow. In the strongest statement I’ve seen in a long time by an auditor, Ernst and Young has resigned as Super Micro Computer’s auditing firm saying that it is “unwilling to be associated with the financial statements prepared by management.”
This happens just six days ahead of their earnings November 5, which the company has reiterated will still take place.
Janus International Group’s stock is in freefall after bad quarter & bad guidance
Q3 earnings are out and storage building company Janus International saw its sales fall 18% from last year. Its EPS was half of what analysts were expecting and it completely the triple crown by guiding this year’s full revenue forecast from over 1 billion to $917.5. Good thing they were able to squeeze in that extra 500k.
The stock has continued falling from -16% pre-market to a nice red -31% currently.
Oof
Lilium NV plummets to the ground after gov declines to rescue it mid-air
In our second “falling to earth” headline metaphor of the day, Lilium NV will be shuttering its two subsidiaries after it failed to raise the 100mm in loans it needed to stay afloat. Layoffs of 1,000 are inbound as well. The hail mary that Lilium hoped for was the involvement of the German government, but with that window now closed, any hopes of raising the loans are now closed.
Tech Crunch - Kirsten Korosec Electric aircraft startup Lilium has run out of money
Tipranks - Steve Anderson Lilium (NASDAQ:LILM) Stock Plunges 58% on Insolvency News
Spirit Airlines continues its tailspin
Making more moves to stave off bankruptcy after the courts refused an acquisition by JetBlue, Spirit is set to sell 23 planes and implement a cost-cutting (layoff) round. The cutting will save it $80mm & the planes will fetch ~$519mm.
As dire as things appear, Inc notes that Frontier might be exploring making a new bid for the company. Could this one be saved? Will the government allow it to sell to someone else? Or will it continue toward its inevitable impact with the ground?
Espirit is shirtless
Eighties and nineties kids might remember when Espirit was the peak of cool, but no one else does. The failed fashion brand company is filing chapter 7 bankruptcy and will liquidate its assets. An article in ChainStorage notes that the company recently signed a least in downtown Manhattan for a “global creative headquarters.” You’d think that a company on the verge of bankruptcy should be using capital better, but with thinking like that, you wouldn’t be the CEO of Espirit.
Is Zeta Global using weaselly language to play up its revenue retention expectations?
Lauren Balik has been looking into digital media company Zeta Global lately with posts about their election data and irregularities surrounding their “AI” play.
Now she’s back with an overview of how the company uses weaselly language “in order to cook revenue guidance.” She makes a very good case that the company is creatively downplaying political ad spending during an election year (because political ads are inherently cyclical revenue) and portraying it as general ad spending to juice its net revenue retention numbers.
The company is using the phrase “political candidate revenue” as a way of “rolling up advocacy revenue (PACs, special interests groups, anything not directly a politician’s campaign itself, etc.) into the ‘non-political’ line in their guidance.”
Medium - Lauren Balik How Zeta Global (NYSE: ZETA) Cooks Revenue Guidance
The Princeton University endowment fund is laughably bad
Want to feel better about underperforming the market by actively managing your IRA? Well, you’re probably beating Princeton as its endowment fund returned just 3.9 percent in its last fiscal year, underperforming even treasury bills during the same period.
It’s not a fluke, either. From the same article: “During the past 10 years, Princeton’s endowment has returned an annualized 9.2%, behind the S&P 500 at 12.9%”
Why do Ivy league schools have actively-managed, high-fee funds anyway? Is this some form of graft?
If you want to follow them down their underperform rabbit-hole, be sure to check out their investment strategy page.
A boardroom shakeup is the latest battle in the war between Klarna co-founders
Buy now, pay later company Klarna was founded nearly twenty years ago by Victor Jacobsson and Sebastian Siemiatkowski. A decade ago, that partnership presumably ended when Jacobsson left the company. According to the Financial Times, he has been a “thorn in the side of Siemiatkowski ever since.”
Now one of Jacobsson’s key allies, Mikael Walther, has been removed from the board by a shareholder vote of over 87%. In a statement, Walther had this to say: “A majority of those present at the general meeting have decided that I shall leave the board. As a result, there will be one fewer independent voice in the boardroom.”
Independent voices or not, this has apparently cemented CEO Siemiatkowski’s control of the board as it prepares for an IPO.
Financial Times: Klarna board decides to oust co-founder’s key ally in latest power tussle Wall Street Journal: Klarna Shareholders Vote to Remove Mikael Walther From Board
Intuit draws more attention to their CEO’s bad interview by demanding The Verge edit it
There’s a writeup on Tech Dirt which talks about how Intuit’s management lacks any understanding of the Streisand Effect when it attracted more attention to an interview with their CEO, Sasan Goodarzi, gave to The Verge. Intuit’s communications department turned what would have been a short, terse exchange in an otherwise cupcake interview into a much more interesting story by demanding The Verge remove or edit the podcast.
Everyone is focused on brief flare-up the host and CEO had around Intuit’s lobbying efforts, but no one is pointing out the utterly hilarious part of the exchange where he declares “I am Intuit!” Does Sasan have a history of megalomaniacal moments? This company might be worth following.
