TAL Education Group
4 activist/short documents on this target.
Timeline
TAL is a real business with fake financials: two asset-parking transactions inflated FY2016-FY2018 pre-tax profits by $153M (28.4%) while Deloitte China was starved of audit hours.
TAL inflated Firstleap's acquired deferred revenue by 90-175%, pumping $21-29M of fake profit through FY2017 via an above-the-line accounting lever obscured by an overlooked small acquisition.
TAL's own Peiyou Q3 disclosures, common-sized, mathematically imply offline enrollment declined YoY — contradicting the growth narrative and signaling fabricated results.
TAL Education's core Peiyou business is shrinking, not 'healthy' as CFO Rong Luo claims; under every reasonable model TAL's FY2018 Q3-Q4 disclosures fail to reconcile.