RE:Shorter TrollsI’m long and holding, but the share price since last spring (2023) is discouraging.
FWIW, and I know its old news now, but in the absence of any response from NFG managers I tried learning more about Iceberg Research (IR) over last few weeks. There are lots of stories going back 10 years or a bit more, the whistleblower, shorting, lawsuits filed in Hong Kong, legal disclaimers, and all so that I really couldn’t make sense of it; I came away with an impression but so what.
So after that I looked into IR’s last call, to see how that played out. I didn’t look at the situations, just what the share price did after their call.
The penultimate company seems to have been NuScale. In October 2023 IR had a headline about “NuScale Power ($SMR): A Fake Customer and a Major Contract in Peril Cast Doubt on NuScale’s viability.” There was a follow-on story in May 2024, “NuScale ($SMR) Has Deceived Investors about the Certification of its Reactor”
So then regarding share price I think what I saw was: From inception around late 2021 until July 2022, SMR had traded around 10. There was a run after that to 15, but that Fall it began an ~18-month downtrend, bottoming around 2-3 dollars by late-2023 and early-2024.
When IR published the first criticism (Oct 2023) , NuScale share price was in already well in decline and at about 4 ½. After the IR report, It dropped into that 2-3 dollar range for about 5 months, then started another climb this February.
By May 16 this year, when IR published its next criticism of NuScale, the share price was back to about 6. The market may have ignored or missed that report, but in any case the stock continued higher and eventually climbed to 16 before pulling back. It trades at 12+ something now.
I did see that NuScale responded to the IR report of October 2023 (
NuScale Power Comments on Inaccurate Short-Seller Report | NuScale Power); and it looks like they did not respond (publicly) the second time.
I liked Melissa Render’s presentations on NFG, for now I am leaning toward continuing to trust that she is honest and competent.