$LPKF, Part 4. The order did not come, the shorts covered anyway, and the balance sheet quietly became the thesis.

Part 3 ended with a promise. The exact words were that the order lands this year, or it does not, and the next part of this series gets written after that answer is on the record.

The answer is on the record. It came on July 23 with the half-year report.

The order did not come.

What came instead was a set of numbers almost nobody has read properly, including the financial press that covered them. LPKF has four million euros of cash. It also claims eighty percent of the market it is trying to win. Both of those sentences come from documents published on the same day.

This post is the longest in the series because the research is. I read the half-year report, the earnings call deck, the annual general meeting voting record, the shareholder counter-motions, the chief financial officer's speech to that meeting, the articles of incorporation, and the full German short-selling register going back to 2013. Several of the things I found have not been reported anywhere. Two of the things that were reported are wrong, and I will show you why.

Let's go.