NEW YORK, Oct. 31, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Bragar Eagel & Squire, P.C., a nationally recognized shareholder rights law firm, reminds investors that class actions have been commenced on behalf of stockholders of Warner Bros. Discovery, Inc. (NASDAQ: WBD), Olo, Inc. (NYSE: OLO), Centessa Pharmaceuticals Plc (NASDAQ: CNTA), and PayPal Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: PYPL). Stockholders have until the deadlines below to petition the court to serve as lead plaintiff. Additional information about each case can be found at the link provided.
Warner Bros. Discovery, Inc. (NASDAQ: WBD)
Class Period: May 17, 2021 – April 8, 2022
Lead Plaintiff Deadline: November 22, 2022
The complaint alleges the Defendants made materially false and misleading statements and omitted material facts in the Registration Statement and Prospectus for Warner Bros. common stock. The complaint's allegations related to the merger between Discovery and the WarnerMedia business of AT&T (the "Merger"). The Merger was announced on May 17, 2021 and closed on April 8, 2022. Pursuant to the Merger, Discovery combined its business with WarnerMedia to form Warner Bros.
At the time of filing the Registration Statement and Prospectus, Defendants either knew or had access to adverse information concerning operations of the WarnerMedia business. Among other things, as subsequently disclosed by Defendants after the Merger, (i) WarnerMedia's HBO Max streaming business had a high churn rate that made the business not "viable" unless the churn rate was reversed, (ii) AT&T was overinvesting in WarnerMedia entertainment content for streaming, without sufficient concern for return on investments, (iii) WarnerMedia had a business model to grow the number of subscribers to its streaming service without regard to cost or profitability, (iv) WarnerMedia was improvidently concentrating its investments in streaming and ignoring its other business lines, and (v) WarnerMedia had overstated the number of subscribers to HBO Max by as many as 10 million subscribers, by including as subscribers AT&T customers who had received bundled access to HBO Max, but had not signed onto the service. That adverse information was not disclosed to Discovery shareholders in the Registration Statement or Prospectus or otherwise prior to the effective date of the Merger.
As a result, the Registration Statement and Prospectus and certain of the Defendants' other public statements, contained untrue statements of material fact or omitted to state material facts required to be stated therein or necessary to make the statements therein not misleading, in violation of Sections 11 and 12(a)(2) of the Securities Act.
From April 11, 2022, the first trading day after completion of the Merger, to the date prior to filing of this complaint (September 23, 2022), Warner Bros. market price fell by 52.4%, from $24.78 to $11.79 per share, as the market became aware of the foregoing misrepresented and omitted facts.
For more information on the Warner Bros. class action go to: https://bespc.com/cases/WBD
Olo, Inc. (NYSE: OLO)
Class Period: August 11, 2021 – August 11, 2022
Lead Plaintiff Deadline: November 28, 2022
Olo provides software to restaurants to assist with online ordering and food-delivery coordination. During the Class Period, the Company’s key business metric demonstrating its growth was its “active locations,” with each active location representing a unique restaurant location using an Olo product.
In February 2020, the Company announced a partnership with Subway® restaurants (“Subway”) to enable Subway’s more than 20,000 U.S.-based restaurants to handle digital orders from third-party “marketplaces” such as Uber Eats or DoorDash. Throughout the Class Period, Olo touted the growth of its active locations, with Subway accounting for approximately 20% of those locations. By the first quarter of 2022, the Company’s active locations had grown to approximately 82,000 – a 19% increase over the prior year.
The truth emerged on August 11, 2022, when the Company announced disappointing results for the second quarter of 2022, lowering revenue guidance and reporting that its active location count remained flat at 82,000. The Company explained that it was impacted by the loss of 2,500 Subway locations, due to Subway choosing to implement direct integration with marketplaces, and that the Company expected the remaining Subway locations would also end their contracts with Olo by the fourth quarter of 2022 or first quarter of 2023 – facts Defendants claimed to have incorporated into Olo’s guidance months earlier without informing the market. In response to this news, the price of Olo common stock declined approximately 36%, from a closing price of $12.99 per share on August 11, 2022, to a closing price of $8.26 per share on August 12, 2022.
The Class Action alleges that, during the Class Period, Defendants misled investors and/or failed to disclose that (1) Subway was ending its contract with Olo; (2) Olo’s key business metric – active locations – could not continue to grow as Defendants touted due to the loss of Subway’s business; and (3) that, as a result of the above, Defendants’ statements about Olo’s business, operations, and prospects were false and misleading and/or lacked a reasonable basis.
For more information on the Olo class action go to: https://bespc.com/cases/OLO
Centessa Pharmaceuticals Plc (NASDAQ: CNTA)
Class Period: May 28, 2021 – June 1, 2022 or pursuant to the Company’s May 28, 2021 IPO
Lead Plaintiff Deadline: November 28, 2022
Centessa is a clinical-stage pharmaceutical company that purports to discover, develop, and deliver medicines to patients. The Company’s development pipeline includes, among other products, lixivaptan, a vasopressin V2 receptor small molecule inhibitor in Phase 3 clinical development for the treatment of autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease (“ADPKD”); and ZF874, a small molecule pharmacological chaperone folding corrector of the Z variant of the DNA encoding protein alpha-1-antitrypsin (“A1AT”), which is in Phase 1 clinical development for the treatment of A1AT deficiency (“AATD”).
On April 21, 2021, Centessa filed a registration statement on Form S-1 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) in connection with the IPO, which, after several amendments, was declared effective by the SEC on May 27, 2021 (the “Registration Statement”).
On or about May 28, 2021, Centessa conducted the IPO, issuing 16.5 million of its ADSs to the public at the Offering price of $20 per ADS, for proceeds of $306.9 million to the Company after expenses and applicable underwriting discounts.
On June 1, 2021, Centessa filed a prospectus on Form 424B4 with the SEC in connection with the IPO, which incorporated and formed part of the Registration Statement (the “Prospectus” and, collectively with the Registration Statement, the “Offering Documents”).
The complaint alleges that the Offering Documents were negligently prepared and, as a result, contained untrue statements of material fact or omitted to state other facts necessary to make the statements made not misleading and were not prepared in accordance with the rules and regulations governing their preparation. Additionally, throughout the Class Period, Defendants made materially false and misleading statements regarding the Company’s business, operations, and prospects. Specifically, the Offering Documents and Defendants made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (i) lixivaptan was less safe than Defendants had represented; (ii) Defendants overstated lixivaptan’s clinical and commercial prospects; (iii) ZF874 was less safe than Defendants had represented; (iv) Defendants overstated ZF874’s clinical and commercial prospects while downplaying the drug’s safety issues; and (v) as a result, the Offering Documents and the Company’s public statements throughout the Class Period were materially false and/or misleading and failed to state information required to be stated therein.
On November 1, 2021, Centessa issued a press release announcing results from the Phase 1 study evaluating ZF874 in treating AATD, including, among other results, potential safety issues related to increases in liver enzymes alanine aminotransferase (“ALT”) and aspartate aminotransferase (“AST”) in one of the study subjects.
On this news, Centessa’s ADS price fell $3.19 per share, or 18.55%, to close at $14.01 per share on November 1, 2021.
On June 2, 2022, Centessa issued a press release “announc[ing] that it has made the strategic decision to discontinue development of lixivaptan for [ADPKD,]” citing “a recent observation of [ALT] and [AST] elevations in one subject” from a Phase 3 study of lixivaptan that was designed to assess liver and non-liver safety in certain subjects.
On this news, Centessa’s ADS price fell $1.25 per share, or 27.78%, to close at $3.25 per share on June 2, 2022.
Then, on August 10, 2022, Centessa issued a press release “announc[ing] its decision to discontinue development of ZF874 following a recent report of an adverse event (AE) involving elevated liver enzymes (AST/ALT) in a . . . subject dosed with 5 mg/kg BID of ZF874 in the Phase 1 study.” Centessa stated that “[b]ased on the results observed to date, the Company concluded that ZF874 was unlikely to achieve the desired target product profile.”
On this news, Centessa’s ADS price fell $0.26 per share, or 5.19%, to close at $4.75 per share on August 10, 2022, representing a total decline of 76.25% from the $20.00 per ADS Offering price.
As of the time the complaint was filed, Centessa’s ADS price continues to trade significantly below the $20.00 per ADS Offering price, damaging investors.
For more information on the Centessa class action go to: https://bespc.com/cases/CNTA
PayPal Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: PYPL)
Class Period: February 3, 2021 – February 1, 2022
Lead Plaintiff Deadline: December 5, 2022
The PayPal class action lawsuit alleges that PayPal throughout the Class Period touted the growth in its Net New Active Accounts (“NNAs”) and instructed investors to value the high growth in this metric as one of the most important indicators of how PayPal was performing.
But as the PayPal class action lawsuit alleges, while touting its NNA growth, PayPal failed to disclose that many of the additional users acquired through its cash account creation incentive campaigns were illusory because those incentive campaigns were easily susceptible to fraud. Specifically, PayPal failed to disclose that its cash incentive campaigns significantly increased PayPal’s susceptibility to bot farms that were able to systematically take advantage of PayPal’s $10.00 account opening by creating millions of illegitimate accounts, which ultimately generated no future revenue for PayPal. In addition, the PayPal class action lawsuit alleges that investors were unaware of the lengths PayPal was going to keep inactive customers and fake bot accounts on the platform to prevent churn and inflate its NNA guidance which would have provided a more realistic view of the true demand for PayPal’s platform.
On February 1, 2022, PayPal revealed that its NNAs were only 49 million for 2021, less than the guidance of 50 million it initially provided in February 2021. In doing so, PayPal admitted that “in connection with the increased use of [cash] incentive campaigns throughout 2021, [PayPal] identified 4.5 million accounts that [PayPal] believe[s] were illegitimately created,” and that as a result PayPal changed course on some of its customer acquisition strategies including incentive-led campaigns in the fourth quarter. Further, because PayPal was evolving its customer acquisition and engagement strategy, PayPal now expected only 15-20 million net new customer accounts for 2022 and that PayPal “no longer believe[s] that the 750 million medium-term account aspiration [PayPal] set last year is appropriate.”
On this news, PayPal’s stock price fell by approximately 25%, damaging investors.
For more information on the PayPal class action go to: https://bespc.com/cases/PYPL
About Bragar Eagel & Squire, P.C.:
Bragar Eagel & Squire, P.C. is a nationally recognized law firm with offices in New York, California, and South Carolina. The firm represents individual and institutional investors in commercial, securities, derivative, and other complex litigation in state and federal courts across the country. For more information about the firm, please visit www.bespc.com. Attorney advertising. Prior results do not guarantee similar outcomes.
Contact Information:
Bragar Eagel & Squire, P.C.
Brandon Walker, Esq.
Melissa Fortunato, Esq.
(212) 355-4648
investigations@bespc.com
www.bespc.com
