Fuzhou, China-based distant-water fishing firm Pingtan Marine Enterprise is struggling to get the price of its share back up above the minimum of USD 1.00 (EUR 0.96) required to remain listed on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange.
The company was notified it faces potential delisting under the exchange’s bid price requirement, which requires the company’s stock price to finish above USD 1.00 (EUR 0.93) for 10 consecutive days within a 180-day period. Its stock price first dipped below the minimum price in June 2022 but recovered through 9 September, when it slipped under the threshold. Its share price is trading at USD 0.70 (EUR 0.67).
Pingtan, which has been repeatedly sanctioned by the Nasdaq Stock Exchange for late publication of its results and inadequate reporting of corporate activity, now has until 24 April, 2023 to comply with Nasdaq's minimum bid price requirement. This could prove a challenge for the company, as foreign investors have turned negative on Chinese corporations recently. Several firms publicly listed in the United States have seen their share prices slide after China President Xi Jinping consolidated power at the recent Chinese Communist Party Congress in October 2022. Investors have been struggling to assess the impact of Xi’s potentially unfavorable approach to private business, and Beijing’s ability to handle the slowing down of growth in the real estate sector is also worrying investors.
Domestically, China has seen a stock market rally driven by rumors of a shift in government policy on COVID-19 controls, driven in part by a series of visits by foreign leaders to Beijing in recent weeks and the decision by the Chinese president to attend the ongoing G20 meeting in Bali, Indonesia, in person.
International hedge funds, which previously bought into the China growth story, have also turned cold on China, with Byron Gill, the head of Indus Capital Partners, a New York City-based hedge fund focused on Asian markets and USD 4.7 billion (EUR 4.5 billion) in assets under management, telling Bloomberg recently he saw parallels between China and the Japanese “stagflation” economy in the 1990s.
Weaker consumer confidence and economic growth in China drove imports down by 0.7 percent in October, after a 0.3 percent rise in September. China’s exports to the U.S. fell 13 percent in October, the third-straight month of declines, while its exports to the E.U. dropped 9 percent in October year-over-year.
Goldman Sachs predicted on 10 November China will change its COVID policies and reopen its economy in the second quarter of 2023. The investment bank has also predicted that reopening could boost the Chinese stock market by 20 percent.
Photo courtesy of Goran Vrhovac/Shutterstock
