The questionable business practices of Medical Properties Trust (MPW) continue, notes REITs analyst Rob Simone.
MPW’s stock price is down -75% since being added as a “Best Idea” Short in April 2022. Back then, Simone uncovered numerous issues at the now ailing healthcare REIT. The question every investor should be asking today is: Why haven’t regulators stepped in?
In this excerpt from The Call @ Hedgeye, Simone pokes yet another hole in MPW’s dubious business practices. With so many glaringly obvious red flags, Simone and Hedgeye CEO Keith McCullough are left asking: Who has the integrity to intervene?
Simone: “It’s just another example of the same thing we’ve been calling out for a year and a half. This cannot be allowed to continue. This has to end. It has to. It’s not acceptable behavior. It’s a black mark on capitalism. It’s a disgrace that more than half the analysts still have a Buy on it ... It’s the worst situation that maybe has ever occurred in the REIT market. I hope it’s the worst we ever see. It’s a monstrosity. It cannot be allowed to continue. Someone else needs to step up and say ‘no mas’ because it’s just beyond unacceptable.”
McCullough: “It’s a pattern of behavior of unprincipled people that are willing to break rules and have laws that are only unto them applicable, evidently, until somebody in this country actually steps up. You wonder why sometimes I go off on The Macro Show or Early Look. If I were your landlord and I gave you $100K, and then you just pay me the rent with my money, and I call it income, like, just think about what’s going on.”
Simone: “That is actually what’s happening.”
McCullough: “It’s like a joke at this point for those of you who are regulators watching this, to stand idle is indeed a threat to American capitalism, which is based 100% on this thing called the rule of law. For those of you who are in a position of prosecuting like this, do your f****** job.”
