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Flowers Foods shows how a bad acquisition can overwhelm the operating business. Beyond destroying years of earnings, it signals that management is untrustworthy or incompetent, telling the market not to bother valuing the operating business because shareholders will never see those earnings. A weak operating business can turn around, but there is no outrunning a management team set on bad deals. x.comÂ
Flowers Foods is still salvageable but is choking itself with its dividend. Per @tclaugus2, it dominates the bread aisle with Dave's Killer Bread and Nature's Own, but overpaid for Simply and refuses to cut the dividend while buybacks add debt; even at optimal cash flow, paying down debt with the dividend in place would take 13 years. Tastykake is a poor brand that does not fit its healthy-tilted portfolio, and executives across the sector have been incompetent. x.com x.comÂ
Ondas's share-funded acquisitions look very risky without a strong core business to make them work. It has raised $1.8B selling shares, yet roughly $1.4B sits in cash and short-term investments. One customer provides 55% of revenue, and $252M plus $742M in stock spent on acquisitions has not produced big revenue; continued raises and management pay add to the concern. x.comÂ
Grab is buying mediocre businesses to pump up client numbers because it couldn't acquire those customers at a reasonable cost with its own products and salespeople. The businesses it operates in are also mostly commoditized. x.comÂ
Ondas Holdings financially engineered its growth through acquisitions and will spend years untangling the mess, so GAAP profitability may be 5-10 years away. Integrating acquisitions is hard given cultural and process differences, and unifying data platforms is a mess. The CEO has developed almost none of the products himself, buying them from other founders. Using Palantir's tools, which @TechRepub says cut integration to a few months, will not solve culture and management problems. x.com x.com … Show more
Fluence Energy's 20% guidance cut reflects incompetent leadership, which is exactly why investing in leaders matters. Per @wallstengine, Fluence now expects fiscal 2026 revenue of about $2.4 billion, down from a roughly $3.0 billion midpoint, and an adjusted EBITDA loss near $200 million, blaming delays ramping its Houston contract manufacturing facility. The company says corrective actions have improved daily production and targets neutral to positive operating cash flow in fiscal 2027. x.comÂ
POET Technologies is uninvestable because its management lacks basic judgment, which outweighs having the perfect product at the perfect time. Its CFO breached an NDA by disclosing the Marvell deal himself, and the stock fell nearly 50%, per @StockSavvyShay. There were red flags with this management group even before. Ondas's CEO shows the focus, consistency and trustworthiness investors should look for instead. x.comÂ
POET Technologies' management has proven its incompetence, which matters because a rotten foundation in leadership keeps a business from flourishing. Per @ren_stocks, the CFO broke an NDA by naming a customer, leading Marvell to cancel its deals just as the stock ran from $5 to $16. On a leadership scoring framework, POET rates poorly: a technically credentialed team with a decade-long pattern of overpromising, chasing hot themes, dilution and now a governance failure. x.com x.comÂ
The Trade Desk is not a buy even at $13 because founder Jeff Green, who still runs the company, no longer earns trust. Management made promises it failed to deliver, and Green replaced nearly the entire team in the past year, a major red flag that raises the question of whether he, not the ousted managers, is the real problem. Fundamentals point to disruption: revenue growth fell from 28% to 3%, gross margin from 82% to 74%, and operating income is shrinking fast. x.com x.comÂ
Novartis wasted $12 billion buying Avidity, a company with clear reasons not to own, which reflects bad management where incompetence starts at the top. x.com x.com x.comÂ
Redwire's new $500 million at-the-market offering, a large dilution for a $3.5 billion company, shows CEO Cannito can't be trusted to be financially disciplined. Redwire has good technology, and AE Industrial Partners' exit helps, but management has hurt shareholders many times. Per its filing, proceeds may fund working capital, debt repayment, acquisitions and R&D. x.com x.com x.comÂ
Super Micro Computer is hard to invest in despite its absurd guidance, because what management did leaves zero trust in it. x.comÂ
