Tech Venture Capitalist Never Shorts Stocks, But May Start With This 'Abomination' Of A Company

Jason Calacanis helped solidify his spot in the investing world with lucrative early stakes in companies like Uber Technologies UBER, Trello, Robinhood Markets HOOD and others. Calacanis famously turned a $25,000 investment into $100 million with his early-stage investment in Uber. 

Now, Calacanis may be taking on a new challenge: short selling. Calacanis tweeted Monday that he may short a stock for the first time ever- Oatly Group OTLY. Calacanis is not the first big investing name to show interest in shorting Oatly. Spruce Point Capital released a short report on Oatly more than a year ago in July 2021, but Tweeted about Oatly as recently as Monday. 

What Is Oatly? Oatly is a company that produces and sells oat milk, an alternative to traditional cow’s milk. The market for milk alternatives has grown considerably, according to Precedence Research the dairy alternative market will be worth nearly $70 billion by 2030. 

Also Read: Oatly Ramps Up Expansion Efforts Via Partnership With Germany's Aral

While Oatly has deals with businesses like Starbucks Corp SBUX, there has been lots of criticism that the oat milk itself is not as healthy as Oatly would like you to believe. GQ published an article last April that outlined the different nutritional concerns regarding oat milk, including the fact that it has canola oil and a type of simple sugar called maltose.

The GQ article concluded that Oatly milk is highly processed and probably not great to drink in high quantities every day, but a little bit of oat milk in your coffee isn’t going to kill you. 

It's interesting timing that Calacanis would wait until now to consider shorting Oatly. There has been short interest in the stock for more than a year, and after reaching a 52-week high of $12.47 the stock is now trading around $2.20. He also didn’t say what he disliked about the company, besides calling it an “abomination.”

Oatly reported third-quarter earnings on Monday, missing consensus estimates, with an operating loss for the quarter of $104.3 million versus $44.5 million last year.

Price Action: OTLY shares are trading lower by 13.06% at $2.14 on Monday afternoon.

Photo: Created with an image from oatly.com and Eirik Solheim on flickr