Hanergy Shares Soar Too Close to the Sun
Solar panel hot stock levitates 480% in six months, leaving gravity and reason back on Earth.
online.barrons.com/news/articles/...3983004580507444140052622?
s.auch Guggenheim Solar ETF’s Largest Weight Hanergy Solar Soars: A Fraud or Asia’s Tesla? blogs.barrons.com/asiastocks/2015/03/04/...aud-or-asias-tesla/
...Hanergy’s accounting has raised eyebrows. In a January 29 piece, Financial Times‘ Miles Johnson and Lucy Hornby raised important questions:
While many of its rivals have struggled to remain profitable, HTF, which sells equipment used to make solar panels, has reported net profit margins of over 50 per cent.
Documents reviewed by the Financial Times show that much of the growth comes from within. Nearly all of HTF’s HK$14.8bn in reported revenue since 2010 has been from sales of equipment to its parent, Hanergy Group, which controls 73 per cent of its shares. Its 2013 annual report — the company’s most recent full-year accounts — shows that only 35 per cent of these contracts have been settled, with the balance held as receivables.
Hanergy Group produces solar panels used in solar farms and on roofs and is developing technology that, if successful, would allow solar to be used widely in buildings and cars. Mr Dai said production was ramping up slowly and, as yet, no factory was operating at full capacity. Hanergy aims within the next five years, however, to account for half of the world’s projected thin film production — an ambitious target of 10 gigawatts that requires significant upfront costs in its manufacturing bases.
Hanergy Group has nine factories with one, near Chengdu, having two production lines. According to the company’s financial statements, these factories are the main clients of HTF, which provides them with equipment to make thin film solar panels. A review by the FT of Chinese accounts of the factories found a large gap between the reported revenues up to 2012 and the money the factories spent buying equipment from HTF.....Week-to-date, Hanergy has jumped 63.5%.
First, Hanergy issued a positive profit alert after the market close on Tuesday that it expects its net profit in 2014 to rise by 55%. Second, the indexer FTSE decided to include Hanergy into its Asia ex-Japan large cap index today. Third, clean energy is the theme at the National People’s Congress this week. Mainland Chinese investors may be buying through the Hong Kong-Shanghai Connect and there may be a massive short squeeze today, a source told me. March 4, 2015,