Ströer went public in 2010 as a Germany-based operator of billboards, with the founders Dirk Ströer and Udo Müller floating 47.8% of the company’s shares – they still hold about 42% of the shares today. The business was steadily growing, but perhaps a bit boring. The stock price languished. At the end of 2012, it was down 40% from its IPO, and trading at 7x EV / EBITDA. But something big changed in 2013. Ströer unveiled a “digital” strategy based on three pillars – acquiring a group of online businesses in Turkey and Poland, buying a couple of online ad exchanges, and buying a few online advertising businesses from Dirk Ströer and Udo Müller, who is still the CEO of Ströer. This all seemed to make sense – old world advertising meeting the new, Ströer striving to become number one in Germany in online and offline, a bold company that grasped what others weren’t yet seeing…

We are unimpressed with Ströer’s response to our initial report. There seems to be a cottage industry that has grown up around responding to criticism from short activists. Accordingly, Ströer leaves major issues unaddressed, which we presume is because it has no good answers. Further, certain of its response were highly misleading.

Ströer did not invite the press to its Annual General Meeting on June 22nd. That’s a real shame because in our opinion, they missed out on a remarkable day of obfuscation, contradictions, and an astounding refusal to answer simple questions posed by shareholders. Today we publish a verbatim record of the entire AGM. There’s a lot to digest: tortured attempts to justify the freeXmedia transaction, stonewalling on Sambara Stiftung and suspect share transactions, and new (misleading) information on Project Zero are among the lowlights. Müller stole the show though when he walked out in the middle of a shareholder’s question, telling the crowd he had to pee. Udo and friends show you can’t put lipstick on a whistling pig.