Claims

Factual · Their own work or organisation

“Soon after this a Lehman analyst predicted AMZN would go bankrupt.”

Vinod Khosla, on X · 14 October 2021 · Post by @vkhosla on X, 2021-10-14 (X)

Soon after an earlier point in time, a Lehman analyst predicted Amazon (AMZN) would go bankrupt.

Mostly true True in substance, wrong in a detail.

The second judge would not resolve this claim; the verdict shown is the first judge's.

What would count as true or false

The claim is that a Lehman Brothers analyst predicted Amazon would go bankrupt, around the dot-com period that Khosla's tweet refers to. True: contemporaneous reporting or the research note shows a Lehman analyst (for example, Ravi Suria's June 2000 bond report) forecasting that Amazon could run out of cash or become insolvent or bankrupt. Mostly true: a Lehman analyst issued a strongly negative report warning of a cash crunch or possible default, widely described as predicting bankruptcy, though the note's literal wording stops short of 'bankrupt'. Mostly false: the Lehman analyst was only bearish (for example, a downgrade or a call on the debt's credit quality) with no prediction of insolvency, or the bankruptcy prediction came from an analyst at a different firm. False: no Lehman analyst made a negative call of that kind on Amazon.

Evidence

1. Amazon.com Challenges Analyst Report Los Angeles Times · 7 February 2001

   “Working capital will continue to decline every quarter for the foreseeable future until the company starts generating enough cash profits to cover interest payments or receives a capital infusion”

2. Amazon.com Challenges Analyst Report Los Angeles Times · 7 February 2001

   “He said we would be out of cash by the end of 2000, and he missed by $1.1 billion”

3. Amazon.com Challenges Analyst Report Los Angeles Times · 7 February 2001

   “Suria, who since last June has urged investors to avoid Amazon.com’s convertible bonds, said in his report it is now most appropriate to analyze Amazon.com by the “going concern” standard”

Reasoning

A February 2001 Los Angeles Times article (E3) reports that the analyst Ravi Suria had been urging investors since June 2000 to avoid Amazon's convertible bonds, and that his new report said Amazon should now be analysed by the "going concern" standard. The same article quotes a forecast that Amazon's working capital would keep falling until it earned enough cash to cover its interest payments or received new capital (E1). Amazon's spokesman said Suria had predicted the company would run out of cash by the end of 2000 (E2). Together this is a strong warning of a cash crunch and possible insolvency, but none of the quoted lines literally predicts bankruptcy, and none of them names Lehman. The link to Lehman comes only from the resolution criteria, which name Suria's June 2000 bond report as a Lehman report, so "mostly true" fits better than "true".

Cite this claim

Vinod Khosla, “Soon after an earlier point in time, a Lehman analyst predicted Amazon (AMZN) would go bankrupt.” (said 14 October 2021). Verdict: mostly true. Reliability API, claim c_ccf71232eb46, method 0.1.0+c876030c. https://epistacklabs.com/claims/c_ccf71232eb46