Based on Hunterbrook Media’s reporting, Hunterbrook Capital is short $SOC at the time of publication. Positions may change at any time. See full disclosures below.
This morning, on an urgent public investor call, Exxon Mobil spinout Sable Offshore announced it had formed a Special Committee to investigate reporting by Hunterbrook Media that revealed $SOC may have shared material nonpublic information (MNPI, or insider info) with a select group of investors.
On the investor call, Sable also appeared to confirm Hunterbrook’s reporting that it would need to raise equity funding — around $225 million, Sable disclosed, in order to extend the maturity date of its key loan from Exxon, the prior owner of the oil and gas project. The announced raise would dilute existing shareholders by about 20% based on the roughly $8.30 price per share at the time of this publication.
READ: Exxon Spinout Sable Leaked Key Info To Investors Including Golfer Phil Mickelson
The upcoming equity raise had previously not been widely disclosed — though it had been mentioned to a small group of investors on a private call, the leaked recording of which Hunterbrook published on Friday. Sable disclosed this morning that the $225 million equity raise is a requirement to extend the duration of its loan with Exxon. Without this extension, Exxon could reclaim the project without any payment to Sable. The project is Sable’s sole asset.
Sable initially claimed that October call was “either AI generated or otherwise altered” in a comment to Hunterbrook.
In this morning’s statement, Sable did not claim AI and appeared to acknowledge the call was real, saying it was looking into the “audio recording of a call that took place in October 2025.”
Sable added: “We have no further comment while the investigation is ongoing.”
Sable also confirmed that it is now primarily pursuing an offshore shipment approach to produce oil and gas, rather than the company’s original goal of relaunching a pipeline that runs through Santa Barbara.
The project had been shut down under prior ownership after causing one of the worst oil spills in California history.
Star golfer and $SOC investor Phil Mickelson, who declined to comment to Hunterbrook in advance of publication of the Friday article, provided his take on the story on X. He said he was “ultra ultra careful” when trading Sable stock, and claimed that he did not know if the company announcements he had learned about in advance would be positive or negative.
Hunterbrook reported that Mickelson had passed on a tip allegedly from Sable’s CEO Jim Flores in an X group chat on September 29 that the company would be issuing an 8-K filing about a material update later that day. Sable did in fact issue a market-moving 8-K that afternoon.
“I don’t know if it’s a dilution and the stock goes down or a deal for the stock to go up,” Mickelson wrote in response to Hunterbrook’s reporting in a comment on X Friday. “I have to wait to see what the info is.”
In another post, Mickelson compared knowing about a material 8-K filing in advance to knowing about quarterly earnings. (Notably, investors are told quarterly earnings dates in advance, whereas the timing of 8-Ks is not publicly announced.)
Mickelson also tweeted to clarify he was not on “the investor call” from Hunterbrook’s reporting. Hunterbrook did not report that Mickelson was on the call; rather, that he had been a participant in a separate private group chat of Sable investors.
“My lawyer will be in touch with you tomorrow,” he wrote in his final missive, at 8:31 p.m. ET on October 31.
Mickelson — who had averaged about 10 posts on X a day over the past month — did not post again until 9 p.m. ET on Sunday, November 2, the longest he has gone without posting on X since August.
Sam Koppelman is a New York Times best-selling author who has written books with former United States Attorney General Eric Holder and former United States Acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal. He helped build Fenway Strategies into one of the preeminent strategic communications firms in the country—with side quests speechwriting for Michael Bloomberg, running the surrogate remarks operation on the Biden-Harris campaign, and co-founding Mayday, which is now one of the leading information providers on how to access reproductive health care in states with bans. Sam has published in the New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Time Magazine, and other outlets — and occasionally volunteers on a fire speech for a good cause. He has a BA in Government from Harvard, where he was named a John Harvard Scholar and wrote op-eds like “Shut Down Harvard Football,” which he tells us were great for his social life.
Wendy Nardi joined Hunterbrook after working as a developmental and copy editor for academic publishers, government agencies, Fortune 500 companies, and international scholars. She has been a researcher and writer for documentary series and a regular contributor to The Boston Globe. Her other publications range from magazine features to fiction in literary journals. She has an M.A. in Philosophy from Columbia University and a B.A. in English from the University of Virginia.