On November 16, 2022, Muddy Waters Research (“Muddy Waters”) published a report entitled “DLO: ‘History Never Repeats Itself, but it Does Often Rhyme,'” which concluded that “DLO is likely a fraud” and stated that the Company “has repeated disclosures about its TPV and accounts receivable that flatly contradict one another. There is also a contradictory discrepancy between two key subsidiaries’ accounts payable and accounts receivable. These types of seemingly innocuous misstatements are, instead, often signs of cooked books because it can become quite a strain to keep the numbers straight once you start manipulating them.” In addition, the report stated that “Management and directors dumped an extraordinary ~$1 billion in shares within the first five months of DLO being public. A spate of recent high-level departures brings to mind the idiom about ‘rats fleeing a sinking ship.'”
On this news, dLocal’s stock price fell $10.76 per share, or 50.71%, to close at $10.46 per share on November 16, 2022.
Then, on December 1, 2022, Muddy Waters published a second report stating that dLocal has held calls with clients from several banks, stressing that it had separated client funds from its own. The report also said that dLocal’s calls with clients were “non-specific” and “sweet-talking,” and that “all [the Company] needed to do to address this issue was provide an explanation as to how the cash flows reconcile.”
On this news, dLocal’s stock price fell $2.21 per share, or 15.1%, to close at $12.39 per share on December 1, 2022.
