短暂的活力云杉点飙升，在短款卖家的动荡上

Despite all the public outcry against short sellers, a number of them survived 2021 just fine. A case in point is Ben Axler’s Spruce Point Capital, whose flagship hedge funds gained 21.4 percent on a net basis, according to a letter to investors.

“Last year was marked by volatility and speculative bubbles in the equity markets which provided a favorable backdrop for our fund,” Axler wrote investors in the year-end letter obtained by亚博赞助欧冠.

Axler承认2021年“为卖空社区带来了重大挑战，强迫一些着名的投资者在无情的看涨环境中退出空间。”Reddit加油攻击在所谓的MEME股票中的短卖家，如GameStop和AMC娱乐，在酸息上开始，具有广泛的活动家短期卖家司法部的司法部，增加了他们的困境。

But Spruce Point found plenty of opportunities. Shares of its shorts were down an average of 44 percent from the day before the short reports were published to the end of the year, according to Breakout Point, a research firm and data provider. Those numbers tied Spruce Point with Muddy Waters Capital for eleventh place among activist short sellers last year, a Breakout Point analysis shows.

If there was one particular bright spot for short sellers like Spruce Point, it was the collapse in the shares of special purpose acquisition companies.

“我们发现了一个令人不安的主题，具有长期盈利历史，投机性增长故事，低质量管理团队，以及通过Spacs的公共公开的令人震惊的高估值，”Axler在他给投资者的信中写道。

SPACs provided the grist for three of Axler’s short calls. One was Danimer Scientific, whose shares had fallen 66 percent by year end after Axler’s initial report on April 22. Spruce Point wrote three separate research reports on Danimer, which garnered the ESG label by marketing what it claims is biodegradable plastic. Following Spruce Point’s reports, the company reported it had received an inquiry from the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Spruce Point had pointed out corporate governance issues with Danimer’s executives and argued that its “production figures, its pricing, and rosy financial projections simply do not add up,” basing its analysis on a FOIA request. In response, the company claimed that Spruce Point’s research “lacks appropriate context and demonstrates a limited understanding of our business and the decades of extensive research, proven science, and execution capabilities our company is built on.”

Danimer now trades around $7 per share, well below the $10 SPAC IPO price.

云杉点的另外两份SPAC短裤也有利可图。基于Seattle的Porch集团是家庭服务行业的软件提供商，从4月8日之前的报告前一天从年底逐年下降了10.1％ - 尽管它没有达到云杉点的目标，达到50％的下降。

Axler called Porch “a classic example of a company that has never found a business model that makes sense and was in technical default with a going concern warning before using the frothy SPAC market as an opportunity to allow insiders to dump shares.” He added that “having been conceived nearly 10 years ago, Porch has pivoted its business model multiple times, and we believe has never generated a single dollar of operating cash flow.”

然而，房地产行业专家Nathan Thornberry回到了详细的报告，承认该股是投机性的，但反驳云杉点的索赔，称为“100％不准确”。该股现在交易超过12美元，高于其10美元的IPO价格。

Spruce Point’s third SPAC short was Genius Sports, which bills itself as the “official data, technology, and commercial partner that powers the global ecosystem connecting sports, betting, and media.” By year end, shares had fallen 52 percent from the day before the Spruce Point’s August 5 report, which argued that Genius was “an overhyped revenue growth story assumed to benefit from the broader sports betting market [that] is facing competitive pressure and is unlikely to achieve its stated 25%+ growth targets.”

天才没有回应云杉重点的断言，但它宣布了报告出来的那天与起草的交易。尽管如此，股票跌破，现在每股交易低于7美元。

Spruce Point is known for the sheer volume of its work output, last year publishing short reports on 11 different companies during the year — the most of any of the activist short sellers among the top performers. It's quite a feat, since Spruce Point has only three employees, including Axler, the founder and chief investment officer, Daniel Oliver, chief operating and compliance officer, and analyst Jeff Cherkin.

根据突破点的分析，云杉重点已经封闭了他的四家公司的短裤：Nuvei，Lightspeed，燕麦组和巨大的巨头。