The short-seller who helped bring down Valeant is betting against the company again
According to an interview with James Passeri at The Street, Left has entered into a short position against the troubled pharmaceutical maker that he helped bring down in October.
"I think its obvious its a zero now," Left told The Street. He cited the decision by Sequoia Funds, one of the largest institutional investors in Valeant, to totally sell-off its stake in the drugmaker. Left said that Valeant must be in bad shape if Sequoia looked so hard at their investment and still walked away.
"The fact there they're selling tells everything," he said.
In a letter to investors Tuesday, Sequoia said that the Valeant stake had turned its entire fund's return negative.
"Valeant was our largest position to start the year and its 80% decline through June 30 badly penalized our results," said the letter.
"For the first half, Sequoia generated a negative 13.2% return vs. a positive 3.8% return for the S&P 500 Index. Absent Valeant, the rest of the Fund's portfolio generated a positive return of 2.3% for the first half."
Left was one of the first to highlight the convoluted system of booking revenue at Valeant and its drug pricing practices. This led to an investigation by the US Senate, a stock price drop, a total re-do of their financials and the firing of multiple senior executives. Oddly enough, Left actually reported that he had taken a long position, investing in the stock to go up, as of May.
Additionally on Wednesday, a report from CNBC showed that former-CEO Michael Pearson has dumped more than 5 million shares of the stock worth $96.8 million, which is higher than had been previously reported by the firm.
Following the Left news, shares of Valeant dropped $1.05, a 4.5% drop, to $22.17 a share.
