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AppLovin stock surged to the top of the S&P 500 on Monday after a financial publisher retracted some of its most explosive claims regarding AppLovin’s alleged connections to transnational crime syndicates.
Capitalwatch, a self-described independent news organization and publisher, accused AppLovin of serving as a “laundering machine” for illicit funds from Southeast Asia. It described major shareholder Hao Tang as the key facilitator of this scheme.
Capitalwatch apologized to Tang and said descriptions of his connections to various sources of allegedly illegal funds were “inaccurate and failed to meet our publication standards,” though it stood by its questions of AppLovin’s “complex financial structure.” The company’s platform matches advertisers with mobile app and game publishers.
AppLovin stock jumped 15% on Monday, making it the top performer in the S&P 500 for the day. Shares had fallen 32% this year amid scrutiny from short-sellers, worries about artificial-intelligence the mobile-gaming landscape, and a broader rotation out of technology stocks.
For its part, AppLovin vehemently pushed back on the initial allegations. The company sent a cease-and-desist letter to Capitalwatch, CNBC reported, arguing its reports “contain numerous absurd and demonstrably false statements of purported fact about AppLovin.”
AppLovin didn’t respond to Barron’s request for comment about Capitalwatch’s partial retraction.
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