A hedge-fund manager who is betting against First Solar Inc.’s stock wants his $9 cab fare back after he was invited to a company analyst event then turned away at the door.
Andrew Kaplan said he was barred from entering the meeting in New York on Dec. 16 after receiving an invitation. Kaplan, whose firm Harvest Capital Strategies LLC oversees about $1 billion, said he registered for the event at the Westin New York at Times Square through Sapphire Investor Relations LLC, which represents Tempe, Arizona-based First Solar.
“I get my badge, and I’m having a Diet Coke waiting for it to begin and suddenly an IR person comes over and says ‘Sorry, you have to leave,’” Kaplan, who is short First Solar at Harvest Capital in New York, said in an interview today. “It was clearly just a petty thing because the thing was Web cast and there wasn’t a forum for asking questions.”
First Solar is the third most-shorted company in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Read the rest of the story at Bloomnberg.
Oddly enough, I'm reminded of the analyst that gave Enron's Skilling & Lay a hard time, at an early 2001 tele-conference, for not having a balance sheet available for the meeting. The guy was cursed out by Skilling when the guy kept pressing for an explanation. We all know what happened later that year.
ReplyDeleteNot suggesting that is the case here, but I get suspicious when company management gets that defensive. It's a sign of weakness.