INVESTOR’S GUIDE • LITTLE BIG SHORTS FORTUNE DECEMBER 2020 /JANUARY 2021^56in developing battery and hydrogen fuel cell technology.
These were tantalizing allegations. But one accusation struck
Anderson as almost too flat-out crazy to take at face value. It had to
do with a video Nikola posted to YouTube in January 2018 featur-
ing the Nikola One semi, its original prototype rig. The video shows
the truck cruising through the high desert outside Salt Lake City. It
opens with a long shot of the Nikola One rolling toward the camera
at high speed, barreling across a wide valley. The sun glistens off the
windshield and the gleaming white roof as it zips across the frame.
Nikola titled the video “Nikola One Electric Semi Truck in Mo-
tion.” It generated hundreds of thousands of views online and got
wide pickup from the automotive press. At a 2018 ceremony to
celebrate Nikola’s new Arizona manufacturing facility, Gov. Doug
Ducey watched the video and then gushed, “Nikola Motor Com-
pany is coming to Arizona. This is a huge announcement!”
The insiders claimed the whole thing had been staged. The truck
wasn’t traveling under its own power, they told Anderson. Instead,
it had been towed to the top of a hill. The person at the wheel then
popped it into neutral and started it on its journey downhill—
slowly at first, then accelerating.
The idea that Nikola was pulling a fast one wouldn’t count as
outright fraud, Anderson knew, because the video didn’t explic-
itly claim the truck was self-propelled. But exposing the gimmickT
HIS SUMMER, investor
Nathan Anderson got a juicy
tip. The subject: Nikola Corp.
On June 4, the Phoenix-
based electric-vehicle maker
had gone public through a
reverse merger. In a year of euphoric demand
for growth stocks, particularly EV makers, this
one stood out. Nikola bulls believed the com-
pany would do for hydrogen-powered, long-
haul trucking what Tesla has done for electric
cars. Within a week, investors had pushed its
market cap above $34 billion, enough to over-
take Ford and Fiat Chrysler even though the
upstart had yet to sell a single vehicle.
The tipster wasn’t buying the hype. Neither
was Anderson, a 36-year-old CFA turned
whistleblower turned short-seller.
The source put Anderson, the founder of
Hindenburg Research—a five-person invest-
ment research firm with no clients, no license
to manage investors’ money, and no phone
number or address on its website—in contact
with two former business partners of Nikola.
The informants turned over a cache of text
messages, emails, and photographs that cast
doubts on, among other things, various public
statements made by Nikola and its founder
Trevor Milton about the company’s progressSHERIFFS IN A WILD WEST MARKET
Tiny “activist short” research firms have earned outsize attention—and the
occasional windfall—by shining harsh light on overhyped companies.By BERNHARD WARNER
LITTLE
BIG
SHORTS
JOHNNY MILANO