14 DAY TRIAL // HTC might be traversing its worst period to date. The company has been going through a rough patch lately, with its recent flagship product, the One M9, failing to build much hype, but a few days ago, the device maker hit rock bottom.
As Bloomberg reports, HTC stocks have fallen 60% with no indicators of a swift recovery in sight. Its market price has dropped to $1.5 / €1.37 billion, a ten-year low, and below the $1.5 / €1.37 billion in cash it had in June. At the moment, the only thing valuable to shareholders is HTC’s cash, with its brand, factories and buildings being deemed outright “worthless.”
A few months ago, HTC had to make an official apology to investors for its low performance and promised it would bring a so-called “hero” product to salvage what could be saved. But in the current situation, it seems that the “hero” device might arrive a little too late to the market.
HTC: from bad to worse
HTC’s shares collapsed as low as NT$57.80 / €1.83 / €1.67 before closing at $57.50 / €1.82 / €1.66 in Taipei. With HTC presiding over 828 million shares on issue, the cash-per-share is NT$57 / $1.8 / €1.64. The forecast loss per-share during the period, which was five times wider than anticipated, caused analysts to revalue their position and slash off 17% down to NT$55.54 / $1.75 / €1.6.
This is a far cry from HTC’s position in 2011, when the company was regarded as one of the top smartphone makers out there, being ahead of Apple, Samsung and BlackBerry.
But starting with 2013, things have begun turning sour for HTC, which slowly started losing marketshare to the world’s current top two tech giants. A similar story happened with Nokia, and it is still happening to BlackBerry.
As it is evident with this year’s HTC One M9, the company is continuing to fail at differentiating itself from the competition, as well as from similar products it has launched in the past. On top of that, it has been quite skittish in tackling other niches.
Apart from the Nexus 9, HTC has not made any tablets in like forever and its attempt at smartwatch building got killed in its infancy, with the company saying it didn’t think its efforts were good enough to be launched on the market.
If this trend keeps up, we wouldn’t be surprised if the company announced it was being purchased by a major conglomerate soon enough.