End of An Era? HTC Shares Plunge, Now Worth Less Than in 2005

Markets and investors today passed their judgement on HTC’s Q2 earnings that were released last Friday. And the verdict is damning. HTC (TPE:2498) shares are down 6.9 percent on Monday trading in Taipei, and are therefore down to a level the phone-maker hasn’t been at for eight years.

HTC’s stock just closed at NT$189 (via WSJ and TheNextWeb). The last time it was any lower, according to Google Finance charts, was back at the start of March 2005. HTC’s market cap is now just NT$157.1 billion, which is $5.2 billion.

It’s as if HTC’s era of wildly popular Android phones has been totally wiped out.

The Wall Street Journal quotes a Morgan Stanley note to investors as saying:

The window of opportunity is over – failure to turn the ‘best ever’ HTC One into scale bodes ill for HTC’s long-term outlook.

Though HTC clocked growing profit ($41.63 million) and revenue ($2.35 billion) in its Q2 unaudited financials, the profits came in below analysts’ expectations of $70 million.

HTC CEO Peter Chou has previously vowed to resign if the HTC One is not a sales success. But even if the flagship phone succeeds in relative terms up against the likes of the iPhone 5 and Samsung Galaxy S4, it’ll be a hollow victory being left at the helm of a company worth the same it was eight years ago.