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Two things:

First, If you missed my year-ender, including my commentary about how I rose to my level of incompetence, you can read it here. For paid subscribers, scroll to the end to see my entire Red Flag Alerts list.

Second, In that year-ender, I said I was taking a break until the New Year unless it absolutely positively couldn’t wait. Well… I can’t NOT comment on news that The Container Store has filed for bankruptcy.

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It’s mind-boggling why The Container Store ever went public...

It was a win for the investment bankers, but a loss for everybody else including customers, shareholders and even the husband/wife co-cofounders who did the deal. At some point, as I recall, even the husband, Kip Tindell – who started out as CEO and chairman – publicly wondered as much.

It was one of those stock market train wrecks you could see coming well before the engine ran off the tracks. As I tweeted while going through its IPO prospectus…

That’s because by all accounts, as a customer, it wasn’t just a good operator, but a great operator… and going public clearly appeared destined to ruin a good thing.

To be sure, shortly after the IPO, my wife – a longtime customer – noticed a sharp drop in customer service and the overall friendliness of the staff. A few months later – after reporting its first quarter as a public company – I tweeted…

The reality of the company going public became exceedingly obvious by its second earnings report, when it blamed the weather for its woes. As I tweeted…

By its third quarter, it became obvious the company had made a mistake. As I wrote at the time, in “What Ails the Container Store”…

Whenever a retailer with a good concept goes public, the challenge is to balance the need to feed the street with protecting what made it so special.

In retrospect, that entire piece lays out what over the next 10 years would doom The Container Store.

Here’s that piece in its entirety…

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What Ails the Container Store

July 9, 2014

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Whenever a retailer with a good concept goes public, the challenge is to balance the need to feed the street with protecting what made it so special.

Between blaming the weather and now an overall "retail funk," that appears to be at least part of the story behind what's ailing The Container Store (TCS).

The company, of course, doesn't come out and say that. The Container Store is, based on its earnings call commentary, a culturally "gosh" and "over-the-moon delighted" kind of company. It's the epitome of rah-rah and, and if you go to glassdoor.com and read what employees say, the term "cult-like" comes up more than once.

But as a public company, The Container Store no longer has the luxury of opening stores when and where it wants -- or even keeping its lauded "culture," known as being among the best places to work, intact.

As a private company, it needed to keep its eye on cash flow. As a public company, it needs to show growth -- and lots of it.

And that's where things may currently be getting dicey.

Four things struck out to from the call:

1. The focus on new store growth. New-store acceleration always seems to be the case for retailers that go public. To hear CEO Kip Tindell tell it, "We're even more excited about the experience of our newest stores. Never before, still, have our new stores contributed so much to the profitability of the Company." The trick, of course, is turning that into same-store sales growth, and so far on the same-store sales front, the trend is not The Container Store's friend.

2. The company says that "for some darn reason" its higher-end customers aren't shopping at The Container Store as frequently. Maybe it's because they've bought what they can buy or they have multiple choices to buy from, including online. Or maybe, just maybe, it's because, in California at least, where the company initially rolled out its POP Star frequent-customer promotion, their skin crawls each time they go to the register and they're asked "Are you a POP Star?" (I know my wife's does. And she finds the promotions less attractive than they were when the company was private. Yes, she's a focus group of one, but historically she has been a good focus group of one. And rather than their new POPs program, which tries to gives discounts on things you may not want or need, she misses their old November promotion that gave a $15 gift card for every $100 in purchases.)

3. This comment from Tindell in response to a question about whether the company should promote more to increase traffic: "We're looking at that. We're looking at SG&A reduction. We're looking at limited impact gross margin, more price promotion. We're doing everything that we've learned to be able to do in our careers when we get a little unexpected patch of sluggish sales." That's a mouthful, but did he say "SG&A reduction"? Indeed he did, and in a company that pays its part-timers a premium to minimum wage, that could hit the "attitude" and "service" thing I mentioned in the tweet. So far, SG&A has been running at around 50% of revenue, depending on the quarter. Key for investors: Will the company use that to goose earnings at the expense of the customer experience?

4. As traffic continues to fall, the company can't be any more effusive about how the average ticket continues to rise. Sounds good on the surface, but the average ticket can only increase so much -- whether it's the result of higher pricing (not sustainable) or upsell by salespeople. Obviously, based on overall results, something in that mix isn't working.

Reality: The Container Store had a good thing going on a small scale. Whether it can expand nationally, in the face of existing competition like Bed, Bath & Beyond (BBBY) , without losing what made it so great, remains to be seen. So far, not so good.

The kicker, of course, is that not only did Bed, Bath & Beyond itself wind up going bankrupt, but its successor – Beyond , the remnants of Overstock.com – had recently announced plans to give a $40 million lifeline to The Container Store. It later said it doubted the company could satisfy terms for that deal to be completed.

The bankruptcy brigade in retail rolls on.

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DISCLAIMER: This is solely my opinion based on my observations and interpretations of events, based on published facts and filings, and should not be construed as personal investment advice. (Because it isn’t!)

I can be reached at herb@herbgreenberg.com.

Note: This is a free and revised version of something I originally published on May 27 of last year.

I’ve been following and red-flagging Tupperware for years, going back to my days of short-biased research. Now that the company has filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and its ultimate sale, I thought it was worth re-running this “case study,” as I like to call it.

And this reminder: My Red Flag Alerts and selected On the Street content are no longer free. But while the paint is still drying on my paywall, my introductory price remains. Here’s more on my decision to go paid, and what to expect from my Red Flag Alerts. Next Tupperware, anyone?

Just because a brand is great, doesn't mean it's a good investment...

The most compelling example today is Tupperware Brands , which is no stranger to my longtime readers… and likely no stranger to anybody.

It’s a tale worthy of being told and retold, and a lesson that should never be forgotten.

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Hold the Confetti

When I last wrote about Tupperware, in August of last year, in a piece headlined, “Hold the Confetti,” the stock had just spiked 50% after the company reached a deal with its banks to restructure its debt. As i wrote at the time…

Even with this restructuring, Tupperware’s stock remains highly speculative…

Terms of the credit agreement include provisions for bankruptcy and default, and including wording in the event shares no longer actively trade on the New York Stock Exchange… or anywhere.

As usual, investors ignored the warning, and the shares lifted even higher, almost like a meme stock, because after all, this was Tupperware.

Regulatory Filing From Hell

But what many investors must’ve missed, was the regulatory filing back in April of last year when Tupperware said there was substantial doubt it could continue as a going concern – that is, whether it can even manage to stay afloat.

I would call this the regulatory filing from hell… every company’s worst nightmare.

The company said it wasn’t in compliance with New York Stock Exchange listing standards and that was "doing everything in its power to mitigate the impacts of recent events" – including seeking additional funding. (Famous last words.)

Tupperware also warned that it would likely be in violation of loan covenants, and reminded everybody that less than a month earlier it had disclosed that its financial statements from 2020, 2021 and the first three quarters of 2022 “were materially misstated and therefore the financial statements should be restated and no longer relied upon.”

The Crazy Thing Is…

This was the very same company whose board just a few months earlier had authorized a $75 million stock buyback. The reason, its CEO said, was its confidence "in our early outlook of the year."

Never mind that it didn't have the cash flow or balance sheet to do one.

(File this one away as yet another reason why you should always run – not walk – from financially hobbled companies that announce buybacks as a sign of confidence. In reality, the mere announcement is usually a sign of desperation. But I digress…)

This was all just the latest in the ongoing saga of Tupperware, whose business model despite the iconic nature of its brand has been broken for years...

As I’ve written numerous times, the days of Tupperware parties have passed it by... not just in the U.S., but across the globe.

On Its Death Bed

What many people don’t remember was that in early 2020, just before the pandemic hit, Tupperware appeared to be on its death bed. Its stock had sunk to levels not quite as low as it is today, before skyrocketing seemingly overnight.

Tupperware swiftly became a COVID winner as people started cooking more at home, causing them to seek out containers for leftovers… and Tupperware parties shifted to Zoom.

Before long, its stock rose nearly 3,000%, before plunging back to earth.

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The Trouble was, Tupperware was trying to sell via parties and a creaky multi-level-marketing business model while facing increased competition at retail from the likes of Newell Brands' Rubbermaid, Clorox's Glad, and Helen of Troy's Oxo brand, among many others that are cheaper and more readily available.

But for a direct seller like Tupperware, even more worrisome: beyond the competition of selling products there was also competition for salespeople. That was especially tough in the "gig economy,” given the rise of companies like Uber , DoorDash , and Lyft , but also continued competition from other direct sellers... including the Pampered Chef, Perfectly Posh, and Stella and Dot.

Perennial Turnaround

What’s more, the company had been desperately trying to turn itself around for years...

As part of doing so, it has started to turn to retail, currently most recently via Target but also Amazon . This marks the second time in 20 years it has tried to sell through Target... in a sense, creating another layer of competition for itself. After one quarter, management says that Target amounts to around a mere 1% of sales.

Adding to the challenge is the downside of having a brand that has become generic. By that, I mean if you go to Target's website and type in "Tupperware," it spits out products not limited to Tupperware, but also competitors that even include Target's own house brand.

Just Another Brand

One of the trickiest parts of investing is determining if a product is a brand or a business, or worse, a fad...

Tupperware clearly isn't a fad, but it has devolved into a brand that in all likelihood shouldn't be a company. The story is in the numbers...

As of last year, Tupperware's sales had plunged by half from its 2013 highs. The company’s gross margin has been shrinking. While management has said it's pulling out all stops to protect it, that’s like plugging leaks in a dam. And it doesn't really matter, because the company is barely making money and its free cash flow has turned negative.

Which Gets Us to Today

The reality is, just because Tupperware is a great brand doesn't mean things can't get worse.

Wall Street is littered with the remains of great brands whose companies didn't survive...

Among them, Blackberry, Kodak, Polaroid, Blockbuster, Toys "R" Us, Palm, America Online, and Xerox, to name a few...

That's not to say all companies that are either given up for dead or deemed fads disappear. Great examples include Crocs , Apple , Netflix , Monster Beverage , Starbucks , and Chipotle Mexican Grill .

As for Tupperware, I'm sure the brand will survive, but doing so as a public company? Given that the company appears to be filing for bankruptcy, even if it reorganizes, that seems like a long shot.

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DISCLAIMER: This is solely my opinion based on my observations and interpretations of events, based on published facts and filings, and should not be construed as personal investment advice. (Because it isn’t!) I do not have a position in this stock.

I can be reached at herb@herbgreenberg.com.

Here we are, and nearly 10 years after going public, Alibaba’s stock today was for a short time under its IPO price...

This isn’t the first time it dipped below $68....

It did so in 2015, 2016 and again in 2022, and then today.

Today’s action was no doubt tied to news of China’s slumping economy... and a reminder that all booms are generally followed by busts, or a reasonable facsimile.

The stock’s sluggishness also reflects ongoing concerns over China’s new attitude toward business, which coincided with CEO Jack Ma’s disappearance in 2020 after criticizing China’s government… which, in turn, coincided with the beginning of a multi-year slide in Alibaba’s stock after first shooting past $300.

A Play on China

Ma resurfaced months later, with little explanation. But the whole ordeal was beyond bizarre, especially for Alibaba...

At the time of its public debut in 2014, Alibaba was not just another IPO or even another Chinese IPO. It was the biggest IPO ever.

Key to its popularity were its profit margins, which were in the 40% range. As Bloomberg put it at the time, those margins were “far higher than its U.S. rivals. Amazon.com, the world’s largest online retailer, had a net income margin of 0.51 percent in the March quarter, while EBay Inc., the biggest auction site, had a margin of 18.1 percent.”

Alibaba was the Chinese Amazon, only better... as if Alibaba simply did everything better than everybody else.

And at its public debut at the New York Stock Exchange, Jack Ma became an instant celebrity.

Investors big and small piled in....

The inspirational story of the company’s founding at Ma’s apartment kitchen table became legendary, as did its rapid growth, reflecting China’s explosive economy.

Alibaba became a public proxy for investing in China.

Way too Complicated

But under the surface, there were growing questions, starting with simply how complicated the company’s structure was.

As I wrote in a story that appeared at TheStreet.com 10 days before the actual IPO, referring to the company’s IPO prospectus....

Ignore the pictures of founder Jack Ma and the smiling people. Ignore the colorful charts and the tables showing how fast the company is growing and how big its potential market is.

They're all an effort to get you to gloss over just how complicated Alibaba really is, and complicated often equals trouble.

Any efforts to untangle this company require more than any old genie. They requires a forensic accounting genie.

I went on to say...

Alibaba is just too darn complicated, starting with the footnotes. Footnotes are common in financial filings, but when it comes to footnotes reconciling the various financial statements, Alibaba takes them to a new level, such as these below the consolidated financial statements.

As it turns out, what I wrote only scratched the surface...

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Raising Red Flags

After its IPO, more than a few short-sellers – the most public, Jim Chanos – started raising red flags over Alibaba’s structure and accounting.

By then I had gone on to start Pacific Square Research with my former business partner, who was (and is) an exceptional forensic accountant. He confirmed what Chanos had found and went on to uncover numerous other inconsistencies and accounting issues... all of them suggesting that Alibaba’s IPO financials were as much of an illusion as was China’s real estate boom.

in 2015, the SEC had launched an informal investigation into whether the company had violated securities laws. The investigation turned formal in 2016, and the company has been disclosing it every year since... most recently last July.

Not that investors cared or paid attention...

‘They’re Wrong’

That was evident during CNBC’s annual Delivering Alpha conference in late 2016, when then-Vice Chairman Joe Tsai – now the company’s chairman – sat for an interview with Jim Cramer and David Faber.

Chanos had been a speaker earlier in the day, and Faber mentioned that the short-seller had “been going after Alibaba a bit.” Tsai responded that Chanos “doesn’t to try to understand the business and to appreciate the power of the digital economy in China.” (Which, of course, is irrelevant to the issues Chanos had been raising.)

Cramer then went on to mention the research, which I had shared with him. Turning to Tsai, mentioning me by name, he said...

He believes that you are buying your growth with these, and that if you actually disclosed all the equity investments – which he says you do not – you would have no idea what this company is really earning, other than the fact that the – most of the costs, like what you described, two million people, are off balance sheet, so you can't really figure out how well the company is actually doing.

Tsai responded (emphasis added)...

They're wrong. They never read our annual report. They never read our disclosures. We've made very clear disclosures about our equity investees, our affiliated companies. So that's just not right. And I hope that these guys will spend time and go to China and see what's going on, the power of consumption, the power of people – young people today in China are accessing the Internet through the mobile device.

We responded in a note to our subscribers, mostly hedge funds...

Hold on. Ding. Ding. Ding. Did he say we have not read the annual report and disclosures? (Yes he did, in black-and-white!) That’s absurd. And with more than 2,000-plus hours of forensic work, we can comfortably say that in addition to what BABA has disclosed, we know what it hasn’t disclosed… but we believe probably should have disclosed. Lack of disclosure is a big part of our thesis. It’s one thing to disagree with our analysis; it’s another to say we haven’t done our work. And as for his comment – “You can't just sit in the back room and read some balance sheet and draw conclusions about the business.” We beg to differ. That’s what analysts are supposed to do. And it’s what forensic accountants always do.

Surprise, surprise, without fanfare Alibaba went on to quietly restructure itself in ways that seemed to eliminate some of the issues we spotlighted.

Moral of This Story

Therein lies the moral of this story: Accounting issues don’t matter until they do, if ever. If everybody wants to own a stock, they will, regardless of any and every red flag.

Some companies transcend the concerns; others – especially if they’re highly levered or turn out to be complete frauds – don’t.

And if they do, it may be something else that gets them...

Like Jack Ma disappearing... and China cracking down on what it likely perceived as capitalists gone wild.

Funny how that works.

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DISCLAIMER: This is solely my opinion based on my observations and interpretations of events, based on published facts and filings, and should not be construed as personal investment advice. (Because it isn’t!)

Feel free to contact me at herb@herbgreenberg.com. You can follow me on Twitter (X) and Threads @herbgreenberg.

Some stock stories stick with you more than others. For me, Newell is among them...

Maybe best known for its 1999 merger with Rubbermaid, later dubbed “the merger from hell,” Newell went through so many incarnations and acquisitions over the years that it can be hard to keep them straight.

It was like a corporate shell game, and that’s never a good sign…

No wonder Newell landed on the radar of the short research firm I was with in 2017, prompting us to publish a report in September of that year headlined…

Is Newell About to Get Run Through the Osterizer?

The stock had already taken a tumble on an earnings disappointment – not its first – but as we wrote, “red flags are flying everywhere we look.”

The pushback we received at the time, from a few subscribers, was that “the valuation has already compressed.”

Indeed it had, reflected by its stock, which had tumbled about 20% in the months before we published.

From Bad to Worse

Our work suggested something worse was going on...

That’s the trouble with the “compressed” argument, and why it’s a steady theme here. As Newell shows so clearly, just because a valuation has compressed doesn’t mean it can’t compress more.

And, boy, did Newell’s valuation compress... and compress... and compress.

It was 41 when we launched coverage, plunging another 28% on bad earnings news less than two months later.

Subsequently, nothing helped.

Not new management…

Not activists…

The business wasn’t just broken, its performance was an illusion... the result of management resorting to accounting sleight of hand in an effort to distract investors from seeing just how much management had boxed itself into a corner of overpromising on what it could realistically deliver.

In the end, it was outright (not to mention good, old fashioned) earnings manipulation.

Enter the SEC

I hadn’t thought about this until a few weeks ago when Bill Whiteside and Jeff Middleswart at Peek Behind the Numbers here on Substack wrote a report headlined, “Newell Brands and the SEC – At Last They Meet.”

Long story short, the SEC sued Newell and ex-CEO Michael Polk for “misleading investors” in 2016 and 2017....

In other words, they lowered the boom six years after the fact, and nearly four years after the company first acknowledge receiving a subpoena related to the issue. As is usually the case, both sides settled.

This would’ve been an easy one to miss, because it happened so long ago. And Newell at this point is not what I’d call a made-for-TV name.

There’s also the fact that investors generally roll their eyes at SEC investigations, since they’re often so long after the fact, as was the case here.

But they’re important, if no other reason that serving as a reminder how far even today management will go to make things look better than they really are.

‘Scrubbing’ the Accruals

This is such a textbook case. From the SEC’s press release:

Newell and Polk took actions that increased the company’s publicly disclosed core sales growth in ways that were out of step with Newell’s actual but undisclosed sales trends, allowing the company to announce “strong” or “solid” results in quarters it internally described as disappointing due to shortfalls in sales.

What’s more...

Newell pulled sales forward into earlier quarters without adequate disclosure and engaged in accounting practices that were inconsistent with GAAP, while overriding its internal accounting controls. Collectively, these measures gave the misleading appearance that Newell had achieved core sales growth in line with its targets and deprived investors of information relevant to an accurate and complete understanding of Newell’s actual sales trends.

The press release went on to quote Mark Cave, associate director of the SEC’s division of enforcement, as saying that Polk “issued an instruction to ‘scrub’ the company’s accruals after he learned that the company was projecting a ‘massive’ and ‘disappointing’ miss for the quarter.”

Size Doesn’t Matter

The best part, as Bill and Jeff point out… this wasn’t some puny company, where it’s not uncommon to find these kind of shenanigans.

When we first wrote about it, Newell’s market cap topped $20 billion...

Today it’s $2.7 billion.

And as Jeff and Bill go on to say, this isn’t an isolated case among big companies...

Surveys of CFOs have indicated that they believe that in any given year 20% of companies have materially overstated their earnings even though they have adhered to GAAP. Now consider that we live in a world where well over 90% of companies are being valued on non-GAAP results that have been adjusted by the companies themselves to make them more ‘realistic.’

They go on to point out that the real risk isn’t that the SEC ultimately catches on. Let’s face it, they’re often the last to know, but that’s not the point...

The risk is that after several quarters of ‘stretching the rubber band’ to meet earnings targets with aggressive accounting choices and unrealistic adjustments, the organic growth never comes back, and the company finally reports the string of disappointing quarters that drive the stock down 20%. There may never be investigations, charges, and penalties, but the unexpected losses are still very real.

The irony is that a few decades earlier, Newell had a reputation as being a conservatively, well-run company.

Now it will be a poster child for just the opposite.

As usual, if you enjoyed this, please click on the heart below and feel free to share it with friends.

DISCLAIMER: This is solely my opinion based on my observations and interpretations of events, based on published facts and filings, and should not be construed as personal investment advice. (Because it isn’t!)

Feel free to contact me at herbgreenberg@substack.com. You can follow me on Twitter and Threads @herbgreenberg.

The late Maya Angelou had this great saying...

When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.

That goes for companies, too, which is why it should been no surprise that the wheels seem to be coming off TuSimple ­(TSP), which during the “Everything Bubble” of not that long ago had been the belle of the autonomous trucking ball.

To say the company is a mess would be an understatement...

• It’s on the verge of being delisted from the Nasdaq after failing to file its first quarter 10-Q, last year’s 10-K and last year’s third quarter 10-Q with the SEC.

• As part of what appears to be a last-ditch restructuring, it recently lopped off 30% of its workers, the second round of an equal number of layoffs in December.

• And two weeks ago, a full six months after KPMG resigned as its auditor, it hired a replacement... UHY LLC, a U.K.-based international “network” of independent accounting firms, which isn’t known for its roster of public... at least not in the U.S.

• As a result of all this, its stock has lost 96% of its value from its 2021 IPO and is down 98% from its peak.

The reality is... predicting trouble at TuSimple wasn’t too hard...

All you had to do was a few Google searches and follow the road signs, and there were plenty... all of them in bright neon.

I first started researching TuSimple in the summer of 2021 when I thought I’d try my hand at activist short selling.

A few months earlier the company had raised $1 billion in a public offering to become the only pure play in autonomous trucking, and within a month its stock had nearly doubled.

It was given credibility by truck manufacturer Navistar, which had signed a joint development deal with TuSimple, while also taking a small stake in the fledgling company.

The thing that really helped rev the stock, though, was TuSimple’s claim from its earliest IPO filings that it would be in commercial production “at scale” with its fully autonomous trucks by 2024.

Yet, I felt something was off...

I found it odd that the company had started out in China, but with rising U.S.-China tensions it miraculously (almost like – presto!) turned itself into a U.S. company before going public. Its headquarters, in fact, aren’t far from my house here in San Diego.

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And there seemed to be an unusually large number of ex-employees on LinkedIn for a company as young as TuSimple. We got a hold of about a half dozen of them – independent of one another – and they all told the same story about a toxic work environment.

Many were from China, and some seemed to be using TuSimple as a stepping stone to come to the U.S., with the ultimate goal of get more lucrative and seemingly promising jobs 500 miles north in Silicon Valley.

We also spoke with multiple competitors and industry experts, who explained how difficult autonomous trucking really is.

Nothing was more astounding, however, than a lawsuit I stumbled on...

Lawsuits come a dime-a-dozen, but given the source of this one – the head of safety – it was hard to ignore. In the suit, he claimed he had been fired for refusing to “simply ‘sign off’ on safety standards that were not simply met.

He wouldn’t talk but we got a hold of one of his former associates who confirmed aspects of his lawsuit. The case is ongoing.

Unfortunately for us, as we were wrapping up our work another activist published a report on the company, so even though it missed a few key elements we had we decided we should pivot to other ideas. (It stills gnaws at me , but I digress...)

As it turns out, given the crazy market at the time, the stock actually spiked on the report.

The ordeal helped hasten my decision to end my ill-fated stint at activist short selling, leading to my decision to join Empire Financial Research.

Based on the research I had already done, I couldn’t let go of TuSimple...

Less than a month after joining Empire I pushed a report headlined, “The Hype Surrounding Autonomous Trucks and Flying Taxis.”

I had found that even before going public, management had a tendency to make overzealous financial projections and claims about when its self-driving trucks would be on the road.

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Like a shell game, it was hard to keep track of everything they had been saying. As I wrote at the time...

The company has missed the mark multiple times on various forecasts.

For example, according to tech website The Information, fundraising documents in 2016 claimed that revenues would hit $1 billion (with a "b") by this year. Reality... the company is now guiding for a mere $5 million to $7 million (with an "m"). Consensus is $6.5 million.

TuSimple has been just as unrealistic forecasting when its trucks would be unmanned in commercial operations.

Consider one top executive's 2017 claim that "within the next year" there would be "real trucks in real fleets hauling real freight" using its autonomous technology. (Didn't happen.)

Or the same executive's early 2019 claim that the company would be able to "take the driver out of the cab on trucks" by the end of 2020 or early 2021. A month later, one co-founder said something similar, before repeating the same target a month later in the Chinese press. (Didn't happen.)

Now, the company is saying a driver-out "pilot" or "demonstration" should happen by the end of this year, with the caveat that "the supply chain" could trip it up.

I wrote that in October 2021, and while the company ultimately claimed it met the deadline for a test drive of a driverless truck on a public highway, it did so miraculously a mere nine days before the end of the year. It waited another seven days to announce it.

Epilogue...

Toward the end of last year all sorts of hell broke loose. The company was rocked by internal and government investigations, as well as the firing of CEO/co-founder Xiaodi Hou, who then seized control of the company and rejoined the board. He then fired the board... only then to resign in the wake of more controversy. (You can’t make this stuff up.)

In the middle of all this, seemingly wanting nothing to do with such dysfunction, Navistar backed out of its joint development deal without any explanation.

Then, earlier this year, news reports surfaced saying the Justice Department was pondering filing espionage charges against the company. The company denied the reports. But since it hasn’t filed any of its quarterly results with the SEC for nine months, there has been no formal disclosures or updates about this.

Meanwhile, remember the company’s claim that it would be commercially producing trucks “at scale” by 2024? That’s been pushed back to 2026.

But don’t hold your breath. Earlier this year the company was delisted from the Nasdaq and now trades for pennies, and in a last gasp to stay relevant rebranded itself as CreateAI.

Not that anybody should be surprised...

After all, TuSimple has been showing investors who it really is every step of the way.

The trick for investors was believing what they saw, not what the company wanted them to see.

DISCLAIMER: This is solely my opinion based on my observations and interpretations of events, based on published facts, and should not be construed as investment advice.