HF Foods Group, Inc. (HFFG) Accused of Misleading Shareholders
According to the complaint for alleged violations of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 between August 23, 2018 and March 23, 2020, throughout the relevant period, HF Foods purported to disclose all of its related party transactions in its filings with the SEC, each time attesting to the Company’s internal control over financial reporting and the disclosure of all fraud. Then, on June 25, 2019, HF Foods filed a Form 8-K describing its merger with B&R, failing to mention that B&R was a related party. Then, on March 23, 2020, Hindenburg Research published a report revealing that HF Foods had failed to disclose: (i) transactions with related-parties; (ii) its flagrant misuse of shareholder funds; and (iii) its gaming of the FTSE/Russell Index criteria. According to the report, “HF’s massive $509 million merger with food distributor B&R appears to be a blatant undisclosed related-party transaction” and they believed “insiders are using these dozens of related-party transactions to suck cash out of the business, eventually leaving shareholders with a hollow, debt-laden company.” On this news, HF Foods’ stock price fell over 20% to close at $9.80 per share.
