Saturday 13 August 2016

Analyst giving negative recommendations not welcome

Article from Bloomberg: "Angry CFO Ejects Macquarie Analyst at PAX Earnings Briefing"

Some snippets:


An earnings briefing in Hong Kong turned heated when the chief financial officer refused to continue with his presentation until an analyst from Macquarie Group Ltd. left the room.

In a video obtained by Bloomberg News, PAX Global Technology Ltd. CFO Chris Lee can be seen standing over a seated Timothy Lam and ordering him to leave the conference room on Wednesday. Lam initiated coverage on PAX Global’s stock in April with an underweight rating, making him the only analyst out of 17 tracked by Bloomberg to have a bearish recommendation at the time. On Thursday, Lee said he regretted his behavior, which was a "one-off" that didn’t reflect the management’s position and he welcomes "diverse points of view," according to an e-mailed statement.

The analyst was asked to leave because PAX Global disputes parts of his report, not because of the rating, Lee said by phone on Wednesday. Lam wasn’t invited to the briefing, Lee said. Macquarie spokeswoman Ida Cheung declined to comment. All analysts should be able to attend the briefing, regardless of their view on the company, Macquarie’s Lam wrote in a note, in which he maintained his underweight rating and raised his target price by 10 H.K. cents.


It is tough to be an analyst giving an "underweight" or "sell" recommendation, but the above is rather extreme. It does however illustrate the problems of being an analyst.

1 comment:

  1. The management of some companies in Malaysia will not even speak to analysts (or arrange meetings with their buy-side clients), if they have a Sell recommendation on their stock... Not naming any names!!

    ReplyDelete