Investors Say HTC Ain’t Worth Squat

HTC has tried a lot of things to reverse its tumbling smartphone market share: Since last year, the Taiwanese company has replaced its marketing chief, begun selling GoPro-like action cameras and developing virtual-reality headgear, bet more heavily on its high-end but poor-selling line of phones called the One, and booted Chief Executive Officer Peter Chou in favor of Chairwoman Cher Wang. None of that has worked, and shareholders aren’t happy.

Investors saw HTC as a global player in 2011, when the company’s sales topped $4.6 billion a quarter. It was briefly No. 1 in the U.S. back then but no longer ranks among most researchers’ top 10. Over the past four years its market valuation has fallen by 95 percent (60 percent this year) as Apple, Samsung, and cheaper Chinese competitors have grabbed share. On Aug. 10, a further plunge left HTC’s value at $1.5 billion, slightly below the amount of cash it has on hand—meaning investors are saying its brand, facilities, and designs are worthless. “Cash is the only asset of value. You can’t really assess any value on the rest of the company,” says Calvin Huang, an analyst at SinoPac Financial Holdings. “HTC’s climb to the top made management too confident, with its ego leading to a string of mistakes in product design, marketing, pricing, and distribution.”