-42% in two days, -76% from peak-AI-mania in March 2024. There is some dark humor in those kinds of charts.
By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.
Shares of AI-mania highflyer Super Micro Computer, one of the many vendors that build servers based on Nvidia’s GPUs, plunged 33% on Wednesday, another 12% today in regular trading, and another 3% afterhours, for a combined plunge of 42.5% in two days, to $28.25, after having exploded by 1,500% from January 2023 and by 3,600% from January 2021, to peak-mania on March 13, 2024.
Since that all-time closing high of $118.81 (split adjusted), the stock has now kathoomphed by 76% and has thereby qualified for a pedestal in our Imploded Stocks – the first AI-mania stock to do so. Congratulations. And there’s room for more.
When looking at a chart like this, we cannot help but wonder: what the heck had gotten into these people? It’s like whatever. There is some dark humor in those kinds of charts that now fill our increasingly crowded pantheon of Imploded Stocks.
The two-day rug-pull came after Super Micro announced that its auditing firm, Ernst & Young, had resigned on October 24. The company had hired EY in March 2023 to perform the audit of fiscal year ended June 30. The audit of the fiscal year has not been completed, and there is still no audited annual report. And now there’s no auditor.
EY’s resignation letter, disclosed by the company in an SEC filing, stated brutally:
“We are resigning due to information that has recently come to our attention which has led us to no longer be able to rely on management’s and the Audit Committee’s representations and to be unwilling to be associated with the financial statements prepared by management, and after concluding we can no longer provide the Audit Services in accordance with applicable law or professional obligations.”
What smells particularly bad is that the noisy adversarial resignation of the auditor comes after short-seller Hindenburg Research had detailed a laundry list of allegations on August 27, including “glaring accounting red flags,” “accounting manipulation,” and “evidence of undisclosed related party transactions,” pointing out that “relationships with both disclosed and undisclosed related parties serve as fertile ground for dubious accounting,” and that these “relationships seem oddly circular.”
Hindenburg Research is a short-seller, so we take this stuff with a grain of salt. But EY’s resignation is bad after the Hindenburg allegations.
In the SEC filing, the company said that it “does not currently expect that resolution of any of the matters raised by EY, or under consideration by the Special Committee, as noted below, will result in any restatements of its quarterly reports for the fiscal year 2024 ending June 30, 2024, or for prior fiscal years.”
This whole series of rug-pulls – interrupted by smaller ups and downs – had commenced ominously on April 19 with a 23% plunge, after the company skipped announcing the preliminary results that had been expected ahead of its official earnings results. It was the first big get-the-heck-out moment for a ridiculously priced AI-mania stock.
On August 27 came the Hindenburg allegations. On August 28, the company announced in an SEC filing that its annual report, due on August 29, would be delayed further, and the stock tanked further.
“Additional time is needed for SMCI’s management to complete its assessment of the design and operating effectiveness of its internal controls over financial reporting as of June 30, 2024,” it said at the time ominously.
And the company still hasn’t filed its audited annual report. The Nasdaq has given it a 60-day extension to file the report by November 27. And now its auditor that was supposed to audit that report has quit.
On September 6, the WSJ reported that the Department of Justice was investigating Super Micro over accounting issues, according to sources, and the stock tanked 12%.
Accounting issues are bad because those reported revenues and profits, that had helped shoot the shares to the moon, suddenly come into doubt.
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There is never just one cockroach!
This is bad…right?
When the auditors walk away from million dollar contacts because even they can not take the BS anymore…
“The two-day rug-pull came after Super Micro announced that its auditing firm, Ernst & Young, had resigned on October 24.”
It is completely bad, yes!
It took a public report from Hindenburg to spur EY into action? Why didn’t EY identify and act on these problems based on its own work?
The optics aren’t good. Anything goes as long as the corruption is kept from the public’s eye?
It’s the money…until it’s not.
Meaning EY wasn’t going to turn down an engagement unless they had to.
Tide is starting to go out a la Buffett.
Yes, look at the chart for CVNA, not that it’s destined to fall, but man it’s really been going up without much in the way of net income.
I wish I knew all the insider stories. Could barely a fun read.
This was one of Jim Cramer’s favorite picks on CNBC. The Bear Sterns promoter does it again.
Duly noted!
Same church,different pew…
While there are many stories on SMCI, facts will be with the DOJ. The shorts have made ton of money, the little guy losing.
If you got out at the right time it was a good pick. But I doubt Cramer shared an exit strategy.
Not true, Swamp Creature.
Wishful thinking this can be a preview for Nvidia and Tesla soon enough, but likely this is the main driver for this plunge, another Enron wannabe. Unless the same thing can be said about Nvidia or Tesla, we might still be a long way off for rapid descent. Although I remember reading something about Tesla and there’s some funny accounting there as well, didn’t dig into the details, probably another nothing burger..
My prediction the next one that will fall into this same pattern with be DJT, that one has been on quite a roller coaster ride for sure..
“The two-day rug-pull came after Super Micro announced that its auditing firm, Ernst & Young, had resigned on October 24. The company had hired EY in March 2023 to perform the audit of fiscal year ended June 30. The audit of the fiscal year has not been completed, and there is still no audited annual report. And now there’s no auditor.”
Why wish ill upon NVDA? TSLA, on the other hand….
Nvidia on deck.
In the northern hemisphere it’s the wrong time of year for tulips. But they are blooming anyway.
NVDA has the demand to continue to grow revenue and it’s competitors are unable to make a dent right now. TSLA on the other hand is way overvalued. It’s vehicle sales are small compared to the big auto manufacturers. Even if you include charging and solar products, it’s still overvalued.
Charging and solar are even more worthless than the crappy cars
C’mon Wolf SMCI was cooking the books. It’s like thinking the entire utility sector is a bubble just because Enron was doing fraud.
I know it’s fashionable to hate on AI at the moment, but just ignore the FUD. We’ve only just started.
Sorry your NVDA, which you hype here with every comment, was down 4.7% today. I didn’t mean to do that. It just happened.
On a more serious note, charts like these show that moon shots fall back to earth, accounting issues or not. There are over 1,000 stocks like this in our pantheon of Imploded Stocks. I don’t write about all of them, but sometimes I do, and it’s already a huge collection.
Feels like yesterday when Beyond Meat was covered on here and the gullible normies ate it up until it now crashed 87% from the high..yet after how many years now, we’re still talking about hype stock pretty often..seems like this market just go strength to strength between bubbles…guess in absence of a sentiment changing event like dot.com or 08, this party won’t stop anytime soon, wonder what’s next after AI? Back to bitcoin mining all over again?
I am hyping so that other people can get rich :] my cost basis is $70, and it’s easily worth $150+
I will sell if it hits $120 at earnings and post an apology on here
But it won’t, lol. It will be well past 150 by then :]
You don’t give one freaking iota about “other people” 🤣 You’re hyping NVDA so that they will buy NVDA so that they will drive up the price further, so that your position gains in value, so that you can then dump it into their lap and walk away with your fiat profit, and to heck with these “other people.” It’s always the same BS.
That’s a mental trap we tend to fall into: “I will sell if it hits $120 at earnings”. The SMCI example shows that, in such a disaster case, the price falls a lot more than 10% (where your stop loss/sell target for NVDA is), rather by 20% or more (SMCI stock lost 25% on Oct-30th). In such scenario, there may not be any buyer, so you will be holding a stock that has already lost >20% and your mental strategy may change to “hope and pray to break even”, the sure path to end up with an 80% loss. I’ve seen it several times with stocks I owned :(
It’s not actually a gain till you sell.
I love this optimism. More than hearing that US is a trash can (still few days for him to say it).
How the world has changed. We don’t want to get rich from real assets and productions but from the folly of the fellow man.
I would argue that ZIRP has affected the psychology of people such that deception has become socially acceptable.
I was reading and article recently about a celebrity real estate agent that was being admired for her business skills because she hired people to create sense of competition on the house she was selling. It was strange that no one saw the unethical element in the story.
Aman – …and yet, 80+ years subsequent to Capt. Reynaud’s immortal cinematic declaration, there are those among us still: “…shocked, shocked!…” to discover gambling in the casino 😉…
may we all find a better day.
Thesis: the low hanging fruit from computers has been harvested or harnessed and while progress will continue it will be slower.
Example: older folks will recall banking hours when the bank closed at 3 PM. Then the real work began for the next 2 hrs as the staff posted, or processed each transaction MANUALLY. I said older.
No doubt AI will continually improve its assistance to banking, but it’s not going to be that degree of assist.
It is comparable to the tractor arriving on the farm. Ag is now so mechanised, with computer help, that large ops run with a handful of workers. But we aren’t going to get another bump of this scale, which would mean no workers. Because stuff screws up.
Similar with inventory. You ask if an item is in stock and the guy checks the computer. He doesn’t go and check the shelves, although you won’t know for sure until he goes to get it. Because the computer can lie, or be unaware of ‘shrinkage’, aka theft. Imagine a Walmart running without computer inventory.
There will be exceptions to this general thesis. Apparently in bio- medical the creation of new molecules is an AI app. Maybe it keeps on twisting a Rubic’s cube of atoms until it gets results. I don’t know much about it.
All I know is that the impact of computers so far is a tough act to follow.
PS: Was Hindenburg’s ‘expose’ a factor in E@Y’s resignation? Or did they already know there were ‘issues’ but just played along until Hind blew the whistle?
I agree. This feels just like the rating agencies downgrading after the horse left the barn. EY is covering their ass now that everyone else knows what they already knew.
Indeed. We have seen over and over how new tech gets hyped – when the application of the new tech is not quite there yet. AI will have a role going forward. It will likely both be greater and less than what people imagine now. It is fun to note that this is nVidia’s third “rebirth” from being a graphics processing chip maker, to being a cyber-currency chip maker, and now being an AI chip maker :) Each rebirth has been accompanied by a spike in share price… followed by a cooling off period as expectations met reality. And I agree with your point about the gap between machine thinking (linear) and human thinking (chaotic). The world does not work in a straight line. AI tries to fake chaotic thinking by looking at lots and lots of past chaos, and applying it to current and future events. But there will always be that step when you have to move from the hypothetical to the real. It doesn’t matter how many cases of toilet paper the computer tells Walmart it has… if you go to the shelf and it isn’t there :)
…the new littoral, where the waves of the analog ocean of the universe ever break against our homegrown, seawall riprap built of ones and zeros…
may we all find a better day.
If AI is so frigging fantastic, why do we still have train and streetcar drivers? Or airline pilots for that matter?
It is an entirely similar con to blockchain and kraptocurrencies.
Bengt Løyer,
You need to update your knowledge. There are already lots of trains without human drivers, including subways, mining trains, etc. Jets have autopilots that can land the planes just fine, but thankfully, regulations still require humans in the cockpit. Robotaxis are all around me. Waymo is the #1 robotaxi fleet in the US, no driver or board, and they’re working. I see them ALL the time here in San Francisco. They’ve become a tourist attraction. You gotta ride the Cable Car and a Waymo. Locals use them too. I walk three blocks to the grocery store, and I see 7 Waymos.
So we still have human-driven Ubers and taxis, but their days are numbered.
So what do we think about NVDA? Hold or sell?
BUY MORE!
[Me to broker: Buy, Sell or hold?
Broker: All good. ]
Take profits.
Realising gains makes them gains.
Buy buy BUY
At a suitably modest bet size, one can afford any eventuality. So a highflyer could be durable and great value, or a complete washout. Holdings for me never have meaning outside of bet size relative to one’s overall pot. (I like to sleep well, more than eat well or awfully.) This approach also means I am less nervously attached to my getting or not getting the ideal buy-in price, and to every fluctuation.
Re: betting, I just put 2K C$ on the nose of a stateside filly.
I’m going to keep slowly selling while I have profits. Every week it goes higher sell a couple of shares.
Hindenburg though a short seller does thorough Research. His reports are always based on solid facts .He blew the scam of stock rigging via benami overseas entities (low free float ) and getting bank loans to buy more companies on ADANI group in India . It was a sensation for few days when the whole group crashed by 30-40%. Since he is in bed with ruling party (read also govt domestic news control) as he has donated billions to the ruling party via electoral bonds , the whole affair was stone washed via fake SEC enquiry etc. They even scammed the supreme court to give a not guilty verdict.
Wolf, You’re too kind – for once – with SuperMicro. SuperMicro’s fiscal year ends June 30. Quarterly filings are “unaudited” while annual filings are. Deloitte resigned its auditing relationship with SuperMicro in March 2023, in the ramp up to the June 2023 fully audited 10-k. This is highly suspicious and suggests Deloitte had already had it up to here with SuperMicro accounting standards in the preceding periods. Personally, that event alone would have screened the stock out for investment purposes, even before the recent issues – no way you put your money in a company with that resignation. Big 4 firms don’t resign major accounts unless they can’t reach any reasonable compromise with the account’s controller.
So E&Y takes over the Deloitte account and signs off on three quarterly reports. It isn’t like no external auditor supervision is occurring for the 10-Qs, but it’s relatively light. Time comes for SuperMicro to release its June 30, 2024 10-k. It keeps getting delayed. This is suspicious by itself; big companies take pride in releasing results on time. Then E&Y resigns, still without a 10-k being filed. So we have two big accounting firms who have been unable to stomach SuperMicro’s accounting practices.
This all stinks to high heaven. The big next question is how it affects NVIDIA with its history of SEC violations and its related party sales to companies owned by the CEO’s relatives. I’m looking forward to the next set of forensic accounting reports.
Good stuff
Artificial Investment stocks, can get enough of them
I will have to research a bit to find a solid answer but it is really hard to put a definition on AI, or more accurately the difference between AI and simply a combination of smarter software with more computing power. Most applications I have seen are the latter even though they are called AI, and most of those applications are not new, but simply a marketing spin. Perhaps there is no difference but I do think there is a real difference between artificial intelligence / machine learning but not clear that is where the majority of productivity gains will come from. I do think there is huge potential when the real deal can fully be applied but obviously lots of challenges to solve to get there, including who is allowed to be the teacher.
Wolf, please do one on robotics (self driving cars). Curious how those stocks are doing
GOOG = Waymo = #1 robotaxi fleet in the US, and they’re working. I see them ALL the time here in San Francisco. They’ve become a tourist attraction. You gotta ride the Cable Car and a Waymo. Locals use them too. I walk three blocks to the grocery store, and I see 7 Waymos.
But startups don’t really have much of chance since the development of this technology took a long time and a lot of resources. This is not something people can do in a garage.
Elon’s Robotaxi is much ‘sexier’ than Waymo….just saying
… and much more theoretical.
Although with Musk in charge of regulation, I guess there’s no risk of a recall, no matter how dangerous FSD is.
Good time to buy funeral stocks?
It’s refreshing to see the big accounting firms doing their job again. In 2008 they aided frauds.
polistra – mebbe that will encourage the owners of that mutt on the SEC’s porch to better-feed and exercise it more often…
may we all find a better day.
‘Room for more’ totally agree…..If you have time and care take the SPX Index and divide it by the SOX Index on a weekly basis and look back to the dot com bubble of 2000 (should give one an idea that it could get worse). AI in my opinion equals Dot Bubble 2.0.
So, you’re telling me to buy the dip?
The P:E is showing just over 16 (with a fresh, frothy “E”). I can only imagine who would be buying at 4X this ratio?
Also, the high yield spread is still collapsed and the MOVE index has soared in a month.
I’m sure there’s nothing to see here.
Super Micro is down another 10% today. So you can BTFD at a lower price 🤣
I thankfully passed on buying this at the beginning of the year. I’m sure they are still shipping lots of products as the mega techs are spending billions on Nvidia infrastructure and they are surely capturing some of that spend. However I don’t think they have any special technology edge. Hp, Dell and many others are just as capable of throwing chips into boxes. It isn’t that hard to do. So what justifies a high multiple?
With their accountants telling us they are at best sloppy with their books, it makes the multiple suspect and the stock radioactive.
What a weird play on NVDA when you could have just bought NVDA.