There were absolutely zero punches pulled by Hedgeye REITs analyst Rob Simone discussing Medical Properties Trust (MPW) on The Call @ Hedgeye this morning.
“It is an epic disaster—an epic disaster. Over the weekend, I actually advised subscribers to start taking some risk off the table. But just to be clear, so there’s no ambiguity here, this stock is freaking worthless. This equity is a zero. There is no price that anyone should be willing to pay for this stock. I’ve been saying that for a year and a half. It still holds true today. This is an unmitigated disaster and a total clown show.”
Since he added MPW to his “Best Idea” Short list in April 2022, the company has routinely used various smoke and mirror tactics (among other things) to dodge criticism and avoid total collapse.
Unsurprisingly, MPW resorted to its typical tactics after The Wall Street Journal published an article Friday pulling back the curtain back on the hospital landlord’s shady dealings.
“Obviously, the stock sold off aggressively,” Simone explains. “If things couldn’t get any weirder, the stock got halted at 1:50 on a Friday for ‘news pending.’ The company put out a release declaring open warfare on The Wall Street Journal, using words like ‘misinformation,’ ‘false and misleading.’ They said the story was probably timed in conjunction with options trading. You guys shoot yourselves in the foot over and over and over again. It’s just a total clown show.”
The stock plunged on Friday and is down almost -70% since Simone added the short.
The icing on the cake? MPW announced a 50% dividend cut today.
“They’ve come to the realization they’ve lost all access to capital. Nobody will ever give them money,” Simone says. “JP Morgan downgraded them today, they caught two downgrades the past two weeks. Their only source of funds is internally generated cash. They cut the dividend by 50%—I thought it would be 20-25%. It is an epic disaster.”
“That’s what happened the past 72 to 96 hours. Now we’re in a full-on tailspin uncontrolled dive, both engines are off. It’s really sad because if you took time to look and read, it should be obvious what was happening here.”
Watch the full clip above.
