Yahoo Finance’s Julie Hyman, Myles Udland and Brian Sozzi break down Hindenburg’s report on electric vehicles.
Video transcription
JULIE HYMAN: Let’s look to the future here today, because of course yesterday we have records for the S&P 500 and the NASDAQ. Today, however, we see a setback in these indices, or I would say, excuse me, we saw records in the S&P and Dow yesterday. The Dow is rising this morning by another 1/10 of 1% in terms of the future here.
But we watched some interesting movers. And one sector of them at least helps explain why NASDAQ futures market is down. I’m talking about electric vehicle manufacturers. There was a fire at a Tesla factory in Fremont, California. And it seems to be putting some pressure on the stocks there. It does not appear that there was much damage, or that at least no injuries were reported, unclear what the damage may be.
And then there’s an EV charging station company called ChargePoint that reported the results year-on-year. The shares are therefore trading lower. So the Tesla shares came under pressure, got ChargePoint and some of the others came under pressure.
And then, guys, there’s the case of Lordstown Motor. And I know we are all reading with great interest this morning, Hindenburg with a short report on Lordstown. Brian Sozzi, they took no hit in this report, and basically said that the company’s manufacturing orders are.
BRIAN SOZZI: Yes, so the headline here, and you see that Lordstown’s shares are down almost 20% in the forex market, is, according to Hindenburg, quoting, Lordstown is an electric vehicle SPAC with no revenue and no salable product, which we believe investors misled. both its demand and production capabilities. This is a very long report. I’m still going through it.
But in this report, Hindenburg does mention an interview that Lordstown CEO Steve Burns conducted on our network on February 23, claiming that they had pre-sold 100,000 electric pickups. Hindenburg argues the point and says that these orders, this order book, consist of, quote, false or completely non-binding orders, which we have noticed. We’re still going through it.
But again, it’s Hindenburg, Myles, flexing his muscles, the same company that took down Nikola last year and really sent the share price here and eventually drove out founder Trevor Milton, but here Lordstown is now coming out of Hindenburg under fire.
MYLES ABROAD: Yes, and just at the Hindenburg point they are very good at the thing they are trying to do, which is creating a big reaction, not only in stocks but also a big headline that people are talking about then. And I think an interesting, perhaps echoing resurgence of what we saw in the market is going to be or do you think it’s someone like Edwin Dorsey who’s at the bear cave doing Hindenburg.
We spoke to Dan David at Wolfpack Research. There are now many people in the short time of the activist. And I think they believe there are a lot of opportunities, not just with Nikola and now Lordstown, as you mentioned, Sozzi. But I think it will be an interesting part of the market story if we move forward here in the coming years.
JULIE HYMAN: And it’s interesting at that point, too. By the way, you know you saw people like Andrew Left, who was a notable short-selling researcher, who fell completely short of short-selling calls in the wake of the entire GameStop stock. Clearly, some of these other guys are unhappy and continue with these calls.