Roblox is Hindenburg's latest target. Here's a roundup of all of the short-seller's big bets. --[Reported by Umva mag]

In September 2020, Hindenburg released its first report on Nikola Corporation, saying that the electric truck manufacturer had exaggerated and misrepresented its products to investors.

Shares plunged 11% in a single day and, at last check, are down 99.5% since Hindenburg first disclosed its short position.

The company's founder, Trevor Milton, was also convicted of fraud in October 2022 after he was found to have lied about Nikola's technology to drive up its share price, as Hindenburg had alleged two years earlier. He's due to be sentenced in June 2023.

Hindenburg's next high-profile target was was Medicare Advantage insurance provider Clover Health, which it attacked just one month after it had listed on the Nasdaq.

The short-seller said in a report published in February 2021 that Clover – as well as its "Wall Street celebrity promoter" Chamath Palihapitiya, who took the company public via a SPAC merger – had misled investors in the run-up to its listing by failing to inform them the Department of Justice was investigating it.

Clover shares dropped 8% the day Hindenburg released its report and are down 72% since the short-seller made its first attack.

Hindenburg disclosed a short position in DraftKings in June 2021.

The activist investors questioned the sports-betting firm's valuation compared to its rivals and also alleged that Bulgarian company SBTech, which it had merged with as part of its own SPAC listing, generated significant amounts of revenue from questionable gambling practices in overseas markets, including Asia.

DraftKings shares plunged 4% lower the day of Hindenburg's report and are down about 29% since then.

Elon Musk bid to take Twitter private for $54.20 a share in April 2022 – and one month later, Hindenburg disclosed a short position in the social media giant.

The activist investor predicted that Musk would be able to renegotiate that deal to a lower price after Twitter posted poor quarterly results and the world's second-richest man said he'd sell his existing 9.2% stake if his takeover offer wasn't accepted.

Hindenburg closed its short position just eight days later, when shares had plunged to just over $35. It then announced a "significant long position" in Twitter in June, betting that Musk would fail in his efforts to back out of the deal even though its stock price had plunged even further.

Musk later changed his mind again in October and bought Twitter at the originally agreed price of $54.20 a share, at which point Hindenburg sold all its shares.

Hindenburg hit the headlines again in January 2023 when it revealed it was shorting Adani Group.

The short-seller said that the Indian conglomerate, controlled by billionaire tycoon Gautam Adani, had "engaged in a brazen stock manipulation and accounting fraud scheme over the course of decades."

Listed Adani companies' share prices plunged after Hindenburg's report, while Adani's own wealth plunged $58 billion in 2023 on the back of the stock market sell-off, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

The activist investor and then Adani have traded further blows since, with Adani issuing a 413-page response calling Hindenburg the "Madoffs of Manhattan" and Hindenburg responding that "fraud is fraud, even when it's perpetrated by one of the wealthiest individuals in the world."

In March 2023, Hindenburg released a report on Twitter founder Jack Dorsey's payments platform Block, which it said had overstated its user numbers and helped to facilitate fraud.

Block shares plunged as much as 22% the day the report was released but have traded down about 7% since then. Square dismissed the claims and said it would pursue legal action via the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Hindenburg took aim Wall Street legend Icahn's holding company Icahn Enterprises (IEP) in May 2023, which it said used inflated asset valuations and "ponzi-like economic structures" to move money from new investors to older ones.

Icahn Enterprises shares plunged 20% the day of the report, wiping around $10 billion off of Icahn's own personal fortune.

Icahn hit back immediately against the short-seller, saying that he stood by IEP's public disclosures.

"We believe the self-serving short seller report published by Hindenburg Research today was intended solely to generate profits on Hindenburg's short position at the expense of IEP's long-term unitholders," he said in a statement.

In late August, Hindenburg Research targeted AI darling Super Micro Computer, which sells server racks filled with Nvidia's GPU chips and liquid-cooling solutions for data centers.

Hindenburg accused the firm of "accounting manipulation" after it said it reviewed instances that suggested the company had ongoing bookkeeping issues. Hindenburg took a short position in shares of the company.

"Our 3-month investigation, which included interviews with former senior employees and industry experts as well as a review of litigation records, international corporate and customs records, found glaring accounting red flags, evidence of undisclosed related party transactions, sanctions and export control failures, and customer issues," Hindenburg wrote.

Shares of Super Micro Computer dropped 5% immediately after the bearish report was published, and since then, it has declined about 20%. 

On Tuesday, October 8, Hindenburg released a bearish report on Roblox and said it has taken a short position in the online gaming platform.

Shares of Roblox fell as much as 9% after the report was released.

According to Hindenburg, Roblox is "lying to investors" by inflating user data.

"Since Roblox isn't profitable, its stock price (and, in turn, insiders' ability to dump hundreds of millions of dollars of stock) is reliant on the growth metrics it presents to Wall Street," Hindenburg said in the report.

"Our research indicates that Roblox is lying to investors, regulators, and advertisers about the number of 'people' on its platform, inflating the key metric by 25-42%+. We also show how engagement hours, another key metric, is inflated by an estimated 100%+," the report said.

"We totally reject the claims made in the report," a Roblox spokesperson said in a statement. "The financial claims made by Hindenburg Research are simply misleading. The authors are, admittedly short sellers (and have an agenda irrespective of the substance of Roblox' business model and results)."

The company also said that Roblox is a "safe and secure platform."

This story has been updated. It was originally published in May 2023.