The Tingo Group Incident: A Reminder to Look Beyond Face Value

We often believe that because a company is listed it is worthy of the price it commands. Apparently, Mississippi bubbles still exist....

Hindenburg Research has again and again exposed that is not the case.

Take the case of Tingo Group Inc, listed on the NASDAQ, worth $3 billion at its peak. The individuals running the company conned investors into believing it is an agricultural behemoth operating in Nigeria.
Tingo used stock photos of farmers using “their” mobile phone devices on their website. The company photoshopped its logo on pictures of airlines encouraging customers to “Fly With Tingo Airlines Today”.
The founder Dozy Mmobuosi’s history is chequered with red flags from lying about his academic achievements to being arrested for issuing bad checks of $70,000.

Tingo’s modus operandi is to claim mysterious relationships with farmers co-operatives, mobile phone device suppliers and banks to perpetuate its image of a goliath. They even used creative accounting to show incredible operating margins while simultaneously making basic calculation errors- in one place they forgot to add 3 zeroes and misspelled its own name.

Despite so many red flags Tingo’s auditors issued a clean audit opinion.
It goes to show that we should not believe everything by looking at its face value. A deeper understanding can help us form a better opinion.
The price that companies demand could be hiding something deeper underneath.

What are your thoughts?