You can buy an actual sandwich at that mystery New Jersey deli — but good luck finding some of the biggest investors in the $100 million company that owns only that one eatery.
Wednesday to locate a group of four investment entities purportedly based in Macao, China, who comprise the largest shareholder group in deli owner Hometown International.
One of those investors — cryptically named VCH Limited — also collects $25,000 per month from Hometown International for a consulting agreement related to efforts by the money-losing sandwich seller to merge with a private entity.
E-Waste, a shell company with multiple ties to Hometown International, likewise is being positioned for such a transaction, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
While Hometown International operates a real Italian deli in Paulsboro, New Jersey — albeit a modest one with less than $37,000 in combined sales in the past two years — E-Waste has no actual business operations.
Despite that fact, the market capitalization of both companies has topped $100 million in recent weeks, due to a seemingly inexplicable rise in the prices of their thinly traded stocks since last year, when overseas investors began taking stakes in the companies.
The biggest single owner in both over-the-counter-traded companies is a Macao entity called Global Equity Limited, which holds 42 million common shares and warrants in Hometown International.
Global Equity also is the largest shareholder, by far, in a third company called Med Spa Vacations, whose sole corporate officer, John Rollo, is the president of E-Waste.
An SEC filing shows that Hometown International in February loaned Med Spa Vacations $150,000 at an interest rate of 6%. Med Spa Vacations says in filings that it is, like E-Waste, a shell company with no ongoing operations that likewise is seeking to combine with a private entity.
Three other entities registered in Macao — VCH Limited, IPC-Trading Company and RTO Limited — each hold 10.5 million shares and warrants in the deli owner.
Filings state that VCH Limited, IPC-Trading Company, RTO Limited and Global Equity Limited are based in the same downtown office building in Macao, a special administrative region of China and a major gambling mecca located less than 40 miles from Hong Kong.
Mystery in Macao
Except for VCH, whose listed address is on the fifth floor of that office building, the other entities are located on the first floor, according to their filings in Macao’s Commercial Registry Office.
But a reporter found no actual offices of the entities at the building, or any other sign of them.
Instead, the reporter found the offices of an accounting company and a related corporate services firm that seem to be acting as mail drops for the investors, and possibly providing other functions.
Those other physical companies at the building are connected to one of Macao’s biggest and most prestigious law firms.
Likewise, nowhere to be found at the address were the individuals who are identified in SEC filings as their managers and controllers of their stock holdings.
Those individuals also do not show up in a search of SEC filings for any other company besides Hometown International, E-Waste or Med Spa Vacations.
The owners of Global Equity, whose registration filings say it began operations in 2016, are listed as two men, Michael Tyldelsey and Ibrahima Thiam.
Tyldelsey also is listed as managing director of VCH, which was created in May 2017.
IPC-Trading’s owners are listed as Thiam and someone named Lan Moi Lilia. The listed owner of RTO Ltd. is a person named Nathalie Tina Pasaywon.
Filings show that RTO was created on the same day in May 2016 as Global Equity.
IPC-Trading began operations four months earlier that year.
The opaque nature of the entities’ ostensible address in Macao and of their managers adds even more questions to the already strange saga of Hometown International and E-Waste.
Three weeks ago, Greenlight Capital hedge fund manager David Einhorn first raised eyebrows and sparked headlines about Hometown International, when he noted in a client letter that the company had an absurdly high market capitalization of more than $100 million despite owning only one tiny deli.
Since then, reporters have scurried south on I-95 to buy reportedly tasty cheesesteaks and Italian hoagies in Paulsboro, and Hometown International has seen had its stock demoted from a mid-tier over-the-counter trading platform because of irregularities in its public disclosures. OTC Markets Group at the same time slapped a “buyer beware” warning on Hometown International’s stock.
The deli company and E-Waste also terminated consulting agreements that had them paying a company controlled by the father of Hometown International Chairman Peter Coker Jr. a total of $17,500 per month after detailed those arrangements.
