Re: Just... no
Amen. For the sake of my sanity I dug further into the allegations and it looks to be the most frivolous whiny investor complaint I've ever seen.
- All the supposed misleading guidance/lies are hand-wavey optimism by the CEO/CFO/CPO. The kind of talk they always give in earning calls especially for a growing company ("we're excited for our new product/strategy/etc"). But you know they're always careful when you pin them down on numbers. The are no false or misleading numbers alleged to have been given.
- Alleged omissions are: They didn't say they weren't expecting to grow enough/sustainably enough/soon enough (for this particular investor's liking? - it's not clear).
Looking at actual numbers in the quarterly announcements over the claim's time period:
August 18, 2023: fiscal year 2024 expect Total revenue in the range of $8.15 billion to $8.20 billion
November 15, 2023: fiscal year 2024 expect Total revenue in the range of $8.15 billion to $8.20 billion
February 20, 2024: fiscal year 2024 Total revenue in the range of $7.95 billion to $8.00 billion but with soft Q3 revenues. This implies Q4 will be decent, which we're yet to see.
It's not even profit warning territory. That this is earth-shattering Feb 20th change in guidance caused a 28% drop in share-price is just.. a market thing. A bubble bursting, a correction, or a buying opportunity depending on your perspective. Every metric is up. This is a seriously profitable company which just experienced some stellar growth. The market got a bit carried away with how stellar, and a bit down at the reality. This is what happens when equity is trading at a PE of over 55 and people keep piling in. The higher the expected future growth the greater the uncertainty in value (because of compounding, right?) and therefore the greater the volatility in share price. Incidentally it's only down 15% as of now. Hopefully the investor didn't panic-sell.
The ass-covering risk list in the annual report is both lengthy and more than sufficient to cover this scenario/events and in particular explicitly contradicts supposed omissions, mentioning variability in growth, past not being a predictor of future growth, and the unique risks of sales to government entities.