Don’t buy anything from a PE firm after Consensual Hallucination runs out?
By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.
Feel-good-video producer and distributor Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment has finally filed for bankruptcy. It was inducted into our pantheon of Imploded Stocks in March 2022 as its shares had collapsed by over 70%.
It’s one of our favorites in the pantheon because it went public via a crowdfunded “Regulation A+” IPO in 2017, as a spin-off by book publisher Chicken Soup for the Soul Publishing, which is not affected by the bankruptcy filing. Born out of the 2012 JOBS Act, Regulation A+ allows small outfits to raise up to $50 million directly from small investors in a 12-month period without having to jump through the hoops and disclosure requirements of a regular IPO.
So Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment has lost money in every year of its publicly traded existence, including $636 million in 2023, according to its Annual Report.
It became infamous in our pantheon with its acquisition of DVD-rental-fossil Redbox, which was a 2-step process: Step 1, it bought a 75.6% stake of Redbox from PE firm Apollo Global Management, which had spun off the other portion of Redbox via merger with a SPAC in October 2021. Those post-SPAC Redbox shares first spiked to $27 intraday and then collapsed to about $2.50 a share when, step 2, Chicken Soup for the Soul acquired them in June 2022.
Problem #1 was that the phenomenon we’ve come to call Consensual Hallucination had already run out on Chicken Soup for the Soul.
And problem #2 was that Redbox was a DVD-rental-fossil that came with $325 million in debt. That debt became Chicken Soup for the Soul’s debt. And Apollo washed its hands off it. Don’t buy anything from a PE firm after Consensual Hallucination runs out?
In addition to Redbox, Chicken Soup for the Soul also operates video streaming company Crackle, which it had acquired from Sony in 2019. In 2016, it had acquired a majority stake in A Plus, a website founded by actor and producer Ashton Kutcher. Other acquisitions include Screen Media and 1091 Pictures.
So in June, the company ran out of money and couldn’t make payroll for its 1,000 employees, according to earlier reporting by Deadline.
In the bankruptcy petition with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware it listed total debts of $970 million and consolidated assets of $414 million. The creditors listed in the bankruptcy filing include:
- Universal Studios Home Entertainment ($16.7 million)
- Universal City Studios Productions ($16.7 million)
- Sony Pictures Home Entertainment ($9.1 million)
- BBC Studios Americas ($9 million)
- Walgreens ($5 million)
- Lionsgate ($4.6 million)
- Walmart ($4.1 million)
- Vizio ($2.75 million)
- Warner Bros. Home Entertainment ($2 million)
- Paramount Pictures ($1.96 million)
- Paramount Home Entertainment ($1.2 million).
On June 11, the company disclosed that CEO William J. Rouhana, Jr., who holds 79% of the voting power of the outstanding common stock, had fired “all members of the Company’s board of directors and the board of directors or board of managers of each subsidiary of the Company,” other than himself, citing a Delaware General Corporation Law under which the entire board may be removed by the holders of a majority of the voting power of the shares. Rouhana stepped down on June 24, according to bankruptcy court documents.
This morning, the company said in an email sent to employees that a new guy had been installed as CEO, Bart Schwartz, who was also appointed as member of the board of directors, along with two other new members, according to Deadline.
As part of the bankruptcy filing, the company is seeking a debtor-in-possession loan that would give it enough liquidity to continue operating during the bankruptcy process and make its payroll and pay vendors. If it doesn’t get DIP funding, it will be liquidated.
Funnily, consensual hallucination took a hold of the Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment shares [CSSE] in June 2020 (at the time, they were down to about $7) drove them up by 550% in 12 months, to a peak of $46 in June 2021, and then they kathoomphed as all this stuff did all over the place – giving rise to our pantheon of Imploded Stocks. By March 2022, they were down by over 70%. By August 2023, they were down by 99%. Today, they’re at 11 cents or whatever (data via YCharts):
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Too bad. I like chicken soup 🍲
Chicken Poop
For the Soul???
Lol, though speaking of stocks that should be imploding, that would unironic be a better headline than Bloomberg’s dumb take on Tesla’s sales drop in 2Q and crumbling profits and market share–“Tesla beats estimates with less-drastic drop in EV sales”. I lol’d so hard. So TSLA sales are down majorly year to year and from last quarter even though total EV sales way up world-wide (and most EV makers sales up), profits are down worse (big price drops to reduce losses), Tesla market share is shrivelling up as rivals improve, FSD stuck at level 2 and way behind others (won’t get better and no Lidar), wave of lawsuits incoming (partially due to FSD false promies), only reason sales drop not worse is fleet sales in EU pulled forward from July so Q3 gonna be even worse.
But.. “less-drastic drop in EV sales” so meme stonk gotta go up, almost 10% at one point today and TSLA still worth more than Toyota, Ford, GM, Honda, BYD, Hyundai-Kia, VW, Stellantis, Mercedes, BMW, Nissan and all other big car companies combined, P/E valuation over 50. Because uh, “less-drastic drop” means it beat estimates, so somebody can just set artificial low estimates (expecting just 5 sales this quarter) beat that and stock goes up. Or, oh yeah, Tesla’s a tech company now, not a car company (that sells no tech and it’s FSD and other tech worse than other car companies). so stonk goes up. Or.. something.
I swear, the stock market right now is even worse than a casino, at least in a real casino you know the probability and the odds. While stocks right now are completely random, it’s like retail investors and algos now are driven by memes alone. At least Chicken Soup for the Soul stock eventually imploded but like Wolf says, IPO was in 2017 and then the Redbox acquisition. years of losses.. And still valuations across S&P, Dow and esp Nasdaq are nuts. TSLA’s esp bad but even the “good” stocks like Apple and FAANG’s are nuts in P/E ratio’s, AAPL’s sales struggling, only bumps them now with big discounts with much more competition, big sales growth not happening yet that valuation.. It’s impossible to do even common-sense investing any more.
“So TSLA sales are down majorly year to year and from last quarter”
This is a lie and bullshit.
Quarter over quarter, Tesla’s deliveries jumped by 15%, duh.
year-over-year, Tesla’s sales dipped 4.8% from the huge record quarter last year.
Many versions of the Model 3 don’t qualify for the rebate due to the battery cells which are supplied by China’s CATL. So Model 3 sales in the US are down big.
Model Y sales were up even in Q1 YoY, and it’s the #2 bestseller of all models in the US, beating the F-150, which was the perennial #1, but got booted down from #1 to #4. Toyota’s RAV 4 jumped to #1.
I stopped reading there, way too much bullshit.
https://wolfstreet.com/2024/06/24/ford-f-150-falls-off-cliff-in-q1-registrations-toyota-rav4-leaps-to-1-tesla-model-y-gains-share-still-2-bestseller-in-the-us/
Wolf, the report from Tesla literally shows a drop from quarter to quarter and year over year, that’s not even in question. Here is the title of the Guardian article on it: “Tesla sales fall for second straight quarter despite price cuts”
and subtitle: “Electric automaker’s quarterly deliveries fell for two straight quarters for the first time ever”
And the same for every other article. Even Bloomberg’s take admits that Tesla deliveries fell, just not quite as sharp as feared. And the numbers, reflect this. Tesla’s 1Q-2Q deliveries did not got up by 15%–every single article is pointing out they fell. You almost always have solid takes on the numbers for everything so no idea why you’re saying Tesla deliveries went up. Not anti-EV here (we have one ourselves) just anti all the BS pumping on Tesla, when they clearly fell.
Miller,
“Wolf, the report from Tesla literally shows a drop from quarter to quarter…”
Why are you being such a relentlessly ignorant idiot? Go to the Tesla website (ir.tesla.com) and look it up, before you post this shit here. Go to Tesla’s current press release (total deliveries in Q2: 443,956) and then scroll down and get the Q1 press release (total deliveries in Q1: 386,810). Quarter over quarter growth: 14.8%.
Adios.
May the Schwartz be with you.
Wow, talk about the insanity of this market. Didn’t even realize they lasted this long, thought they were long buried back in the days..
Yeah we are still a long way to have a good cleanse of all these zombies comapnies..
I’ll bet some execs got some nice Golden Handshakes on the way out for their years of dedicated hard work !
Apollo Global Management, that is really all you need to know….
Another private equity success story.
Yes private equity, the profits through pure parasiting business model. Truly incredibly that leveraged buyouts are even remotely legal let alone such a common practice in finance. Ever since Jack Welch and the LBO craze it’s like we’ve singled out and celebrated the very worst and societally most damaging ways of doing business and the worst role models, and made sure they get the most financially celebrated and rewarded.
It’s why once venerable GE has been gutted, Boeing is a punch line, stocks are approaching 1928 level valuation lunacy and Enron, Theranos and Chicken Soup for the Soul entertainment became some of the best known names in the US business landscape recently. And now with Citizen’s united the moguls can even legally go bribe and buy up a Senator to keep the SEC and regulators away.
I used Redbox for new releases for years. It was cheap and easy to use, when it worked. Last August the new releases stopped appearing. I did some research and found that they stopped paying debt. That was the last time I used the service and the last time a new release was added. After the acquisition it was run into the ground.
Redbox now is all “old” movies you can check out at the library.
PE firm “Essence of toe” is still alive and well thank God, think I’ll go check my holdings.
Yeah it’s a shame, Redbox actually did have a decent service for a while. Really convenient and a lot easier than most options. Seems to be what happens with so many of these acquisitions.
I submitted a resume to Redbox about 12 years ago for field service on their boxes. They told me back then, when I was 50 years old, that they were looking for younger, cooler more hipster type field techs! My exceptional ability to troubleshoot and fix stuff was beside the point!
Bart Swartz
He was great in “Spaceballs”
😂😜😂😜😂😜😂😜
Renamed Chicken **** for the soul.
haha, I’m all for it, would be attention getting at the least
“You don’t want to get to the top of the ladder only to find out you had it leaning up against the wrong wall.
Jack Canfield, Chicken Soup for the Soul
Tags: quotes-to-live-by”
In story after story like this, from sporting goods manufacturers, bike companies piling up a ton of inventory, to the ones like this who thought that people would continue to watch movies on DVD players at home and that Red Boxes would all be sold out forever, all the way to the to non QM lenders who ramped up with the low interest rates and hiring thousands of employees and opening multiple offices…the list goes on and on. The CEOs and Boards that thought this would all continue into to infinity, the ones who made the decisions to ramp up because they thought it would continue to infinity, the same ones that blew out all of these stock valuations to the moon…how stupid were they really?
I mean, who are these people and why did they get paid to make such horrendous decisions?? You’re probably talking hundreds of millions of dollars in salaries and stock options to these people who made these decisions! And they all flopped, they totally blew it. I would’ve gotten fired from any one of these dumb corporations as the CEO because I would have advised against the ramping up, I would’ve tried to convince my board that it would not continue, the pandemic induced demand cycle. And they would have, for sure, fired me!!!
What’s sad right now is there are 1,000 employees that won’t get a paycheck because they can’t make payroll, while at the same time a lot of executives, private equity *ssholes, and so many others all profited nicely!
They’re not stupid at all. They took a dead business model, shackled it with debt, made millions, then let it die. Rinse and repeat….
Now people that buy this shit are stupid and it is a shame when they destroy viable companies in this way.
25 years ago: Global Crossing, Enron, and Worldcom.
I was devastated at the time but, looking back, it was a cheap lesson. Trust no ONE company. Diversify into boring but honest (as far as it goes) businesses.
It *is* a really good question who actually would have been blindly optimistic enough to drive up equity shares like this one (briefly) during a pandemic.
1) Where (exactly) was this money coming from (during a pandemic panic)?
2) There was nothing in company’s history to support giant surge of optimism.
3) Said optimism effectively vanishes within 1-3 years.
We usually chock such things up to cash-flush stupidity.
But when they happen broadly enough, in compressed time periods, I think it is worthwhile to try and dig for more specific details.
Ironically, because it may pinpoint more systemic pathologies.
The money had to,
1) Come from someplace specifically,
2) Go to line items specifically, and
3) The company had to lose money in specific ways.
The specific answers to those questions are probably worth knowing…rather than simply chalking everything up to amorphous “dumb money”.
That’s how people avoid becoming the “dumb money”.
(“Diversify” is the quick and dirty answer for the future…but the details of the dirty past are still worth knowing)
“The money had to, 1) Come from someplace specifically,… The specific answers to those questions are probably worth knowing…”
You’re spinning a silly conspiracy theory because you don’t understand what causes stock prices to go up or down. So here we go, for the gazillionth time:
1. NO money goes into the stock market when someone buys because every dollar that someone pays for a stock is a dollar that the seller of those stocks gets, thereby the seller is taking the dollar out of the stock market again, and the net is zero.
2. What changes prices in the stock market is the buying or selling pressure. If more people are more eager to buy, they bid up prices and pay more than they would have paid before, and prices rise; and sellers get more cash than they would have gotten before and take the same amount of cash out of the market that buyers put into the market. Net effect on cash into/out-of the stock market = 0.
3. There are some exceptions to this, such as IPOs and follow-on share offerings, where new shares being sold require new money to enter the market; and share buybacks, which work the opposite way. So they each pull into the opposite direction.
“What’s sad right now is there are 1,000 employees that won’t get a paycheck because they can’t make payroll, while at the same time a lot of executives, private equity *ssholes, and so many others all profited nicely!”
Exactly. So much of private equity and this worship of the C suite is a plague on US business and society. Mess up royally and get gold plated parachutes, all of the while the workers at the company actually doing the work can’t make rent or pay for their homes or groceries.
And then stocks go up even when the companies basically fail or use stock buybacks instead of building their companies, because stonks are memes and just, oh we can print some more. And of course the execs and big shareholders after Citizen’s united can now just bribe and buy up a Senator to keep the SEC and regulators away anyway. Makes a laughing stock of the idea that the US is even a capitalist free market economy anymore. It’s pure corruption and a special kind of socialism (bailouts and payments from the masses and taxpayers to the execs) if they’re too big to fail. Wouldn’t even be surprised if the commercial real estate bubble speculators (and the residential real estate housing bubble soon to follow after CRE collapse) come begging for a bailout when the CRE mess goes into full free fall mode.
Hear hear!
It’s too bad they’re not literal gold-plated parachutes that let them to free fall when deployed.
Playing chicken for the soul, would be more apt.
If one is interested in following the arc of the American Empire from its beginning ( 1945) till now, one can compare presidents ( Truman-Biden) or Compare typical corporations that make up the economy.
Not sure it is a good look when we compare the likes of General Electric, AT&T or IBM of 1945 with ” Chicken Soup for the Soul,”which seems like nothing more than a rambling collection of nonsense.
Shouldn’t this all be illegal at some point? We give these people way too much leash. It is textbook fraud.
YES JG, it absolutely should be illegal.
Another old guy commenting on here a while back kept saying he had been IN the stock market since, 1980s? or so…
I have been OUT of it since then when the basic fundamentals of investing taught me appeared to have gone down the drain into the vast hidden empires of these HUGE PE and other mass investors.
(Our investing went to the local RE mkt, and we can at least hope we helped some folks find reasonably priced homes. )
Agreed. All of this absolutely should be illegal. But it doesn’t help when the Fed basically encourages the party like it’s 1928 again excesses with ZIRP and QE. And the Supreme Court basically allows the robber baron’s to buy off the regulators with Citizen’s United. And agreed also on investing generally, it’s utter impossible to do any kind of common-sense investing anymore. Fundamentals out the window. Tesla at PE of 50 worth more than all other car companies combined even falling sales, profits and market share. Even FAANG’s and good stocks valuation ridiculous just like before Great Depression. It’s worse than gambling. The stock market has become basically a meme machine.
Unethical, not currently illegal. Should they always equate? Most of the time. But let me share a story:
Friend of a tenant approached me about buying his house. I gave him my offer according to formula and he was going to accept. Told him he should sell it for more on market. He didn’t want to. I talked/helped him do it because I didn’t want to take advantage of his situation.
We sold it, he made more and is in worse shape now. I am out a house.
I made my offer, he’s an adult, he accepted. I talked him out of it. I had no ethical responsibility to do that and it made no difference in his life.
Point being, ethics are subjective. Learned a good lesson myself. Never since have I made it personal: just business. People want the freedom to buy this garbage and fat people want the freedom to eat it. Is gluttony ethical? No, but you wouldn’t take away their choice, even if you should.
DDM: American cable giant Spectrum announces price hikes in July – here’s how much your bill is going up
One of the biggest cable companies is raising its TV, internet and phone plan prices in July.
Here’s how you fight price increases from cable TV: you cancel the thing, and just get broadband.
spectrum is my broadband!
Spectrum? Try another carrier… like Verizon. We dumped our $120 a month broadband with Co* (which is now $150) + equipment if you wanted their router. With V we have a charge of $25 a month for their 5G cube which includes the router. Works just fine. Stream TVs, multiple devices (phones, laptops, iPads, desk top) and the speed is comparable to what we had (and in some cases faster, depending on demand on the cable). As an added bonus, we don’t have the constant outages that our neighbors kvetch about on a daily basis.
We have Co* TV – which is free through our HOA (with HBO and Showtime). Our monthly bill is $14.10 which is for the DVR service which we don’t really need now with On Demand.
They raise the price beyond reason? We dump their service, particularly if said “service” is defective.
Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment provided Chicken Soup for my Soul with its demise. RIP. Consensual Hallucination it was. What do we call the present day low interest rate and stock always north hallucination?
PE: Private Enema
DM: Major insurer ‘Like A Good Neighbor’ company, State Farm General, gives brutal ultimatum to entire state ‘Let us put up prices by 50 percent or we will leave’…
A prominent insurance provider has aired an ultimatum to the entire state of California.
The firm, State Farm General, asked the state’s Department of Insurance Thursday to let them raise residential insurance rates for millions of citizens, or see them move out.
The move indicates financial trouble for the insurance giant, which currently covers homes razed by wildfires.
The Farm removed an endorsement from our HO policy that provided a fire retardant service in the event of a wildfire in our area. Thought that was odd…. considering wildfires are a major contributor to their losses.
But also note that SF often has the lowest rate in town for a major carrier. Anecdotal evidence from people reporting being cancelled by Progr and others, have indicated they could both get coverage from SF and the rate was less than they were paying…. which might explain the request for substantial rate increases. SF is a mutual insurance company which might have some impact on how rates were set.
We’ve been on The Farm since I started driving multiple decades ago. Rate increases were marginal, up until this year. The car premium was hit hard… which makes me wonder if the data sharing on driving habits transmitted by the new technomobile to the manufacturer who, in turn, sells it to Lexis-Nexis who then sells the information to insurance companies has anything to do with that. And, no, you can’t opt out. They say you can, but just try to do it. You’ll find a cure for cancer first.
I jumped through the hoops and got my driving ‘data’ from Lexis-Nexis a couple months ago. My newest car is a ’19 Mustang GT, and I am known to drive rather spirited at times. My L-N report was pretty bland, though they did have a lot of generic data about me; it was many pages of hardcopy, very similar to but less detailed than a typical credit report. I think this may be due to the fact that my car doesn’t have a modem, with which to upload all the data, due to an alleged ‘manufacturing SNAFU.’ I think I lucked out (my other four cars are 1956-2000 model years so are ‘quiet’).
GM’s OnStar supposedly spills all your beans by default–it’s an investment-less moneymaker for them–but, again supposedly, you can opt-out (due, no doubt, to the bad PR GM got from having betrayed its customers yet again).
Earliest category 5 hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico. Insurance companies are in trouble all over.
Goodbye Florida
Floridian here so I hope not.
But it could be goodbye Insurers (4 or 5 already exited in recent years) if we get smacked in the mouth with a couple Cat 3’s.
In 2005 Allstate cancelled every policy in Florida and left for a decade.
I think state Farm is in trouble
Not as long as you have high paid lobbyists buying the votes of insurance commissions, etc. Oligarchy at its finest.
When Chicken Gizzards Publishing spun off this turkey neck, did they immediately invest the proceeds into aquiring rights to print the Handbook For The Recently Deceased?
Must have been that original Campbell’s canned chicken soup. Didn’t exactly stick to the ribs.
Insurance is a numbers game, and big losses have to be covered from higher premiums. Those massive losses result in massive increases for the entire state. Why should folks in Iowa cover wooden houses built in forests? Meh. Houses cost so much more to build, and insurance replacement goes up.
Nothing really to see there.
Now the pantheon of PE fraud, that is popcorn worthy indeed, as the bezzle goes on and on. Should this be made illegal again? Sure, but those killer short opportunities are a valuable way to shuffle bad investments back to the public after all the juice has been sucked out by the inwestor class.
In reality, inflation kills folks on static incomes, because inflation. Taxes, insurance, maintenance only go up. So, recognize reality, and downsize or get out to cheaper areas. I have helped so many people finally sell their huge piles of crap to move into something that is more manageable and cheaper.
But we love our castles. And our stuff. And Stuff. Look at Amazon, all stuff to your door. And Costco, Walmart, and the remaining bricks and mortar- fine purveyors of stuff.
Ok, Carlin rant off.
Many things that were illegal remain illegal…. it’s just that most laws are ignored and prosecution is selective. If they get caught, the corporation pays the fine and the perp goes back to The Hamptons. Put a few into the gray bar hotel, without a hall pass, and see how quick that changes.
Who ended up holding the bags for all these imploded SPACs? It doesn’t look like they lasted long enough to make it into the passive indexes, much less got big enough to be in the SP500.
I can’t imagine there were so many Robinhood YOLOers that they could buy so much stock?
So who bought all this crap that sent the share prices sky high?
I’ve been in the TV biz over 20 years now and I’m like, “Chicken what?”
It was nice for older content, like the Little Rascals and Laurel and Hardy. I used to watch Crackle (ad version) via my Roku but over the last couple of months they lost their minds with the amount of commercials they would play. Now I know why.
Redbox served a function for a while, even though I never saw anybody use the machines. To buy weed at the 7-11, you stepped into the shadow of the Redbox and paid the guy. Now that weed seems to be legal everywhere, there is no need for the fossil.
If you really want the inside scoop on the demise of CSSE, read the article from Hindenburg research 2/14/18 called Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment is a Toxic Mess. Spot on and pre told that bankruptcy and self-dealing is a rinse and repeat pattern by Bill and Amy. Sadly, those inside have been lied to over and over. We’re still unpaid and no health insurance despite Bill deducting health care from the paychecks we had been getting (cough…fraud). Another good article is from Funny Business in Substack called How America’s Most Inspirational Brand Sold Its Soul to the Devil, 7/13/21.