HTC, one of the biggest Android OEMs on the planet is essentially worthless. The company has taken a massive hit, losing 60% of its stock’s value. Currently the troubled tech giant has more cash on hand than the value of it’s stock which means investors think that the assets the company owns are essentially worthless. HTC’s assets are not only physical things like factories, building and their current stock of products but also their brand which has taken a huge hit in the last year.
HTC had NT47.2 billion cash on hand and their market price has fallen to NT47 billion ($1.5 billion). This counts as a 60% drop in the company’s value this year and almost 10% since June. HTC had been valued as high as NT900 billion in 2011 about two years before the release of the redesigned HTC One M7.
Since then a series of strange advertising choices, small evolutionary changes in their flagship devices and changes at the top of the company have signaled to investors that the path forward for HTC is going to be rocky, if there is one at all. In the third quarter, HTC is forecasting sales as low as 48% below analyst estimates.
In the early days of Android, HTC was the best selling brand in the United States. Google thought so much of the company that they’ve partnered with them on several projects including the Nexus One in 2010 and Nexus 9 in 2014. But after the failure of the One, Butterfly and Desire lines to gain any traction in globally, HTC now sits in peril. It should be no surprise that they’re in trouble right now.
They bet big on the HTC One M9 which many people have seen as a step back from the HTC One M8 and sales back that up. Many tech sites have panned the camera as a regression and the processor, a Snapdragon 810, as reason to avoid the newest flagship. In a day when one failed launch can significantly hurt you, the consequences loom large.
Source: Bloomberg
yet another company touched by Beats is in the toilet.
This company was worthless YEARS ago, it just took the tech blogs and investors to figure it out. The REALLY sad thing is, it could have all been avoided but they chose to give crappy support to their crappy devices. If you want a rough time frame, go back to the HTC Jetstream. That is when it all started going downhill. Almost $1000 for an Android tablet that received ZERO updates and ZERO support. That was my last HTC purchase (I had purchased over a dozen before that).
They can’t close up shop fast enough in my opinion.