AstroPower Inc., facing the possibility that it will be kicked off the Nasdaq, failed to turn in a federally mandated earnings report Thursday. A company official previously predicted it would file the report.
Spokeswoman Colleen Gourley said company officials met with Nasdaq officials Thursday, but she would not comment on what happened. Nasdaq spokesman Wayne Lee also declined to comment.
Last month, Glasgow-based AstroPower announced that Nasdaq officials had threatened to delist the company for failing to file its 2002 financial report, known as a Form 10-K. Shortly thereafter, AstroPower requested the Thursday hearing.
Analysts who follow AstroPower said Thursday that the longer the company delays releasing the financial information, the more nervous investors are likely to get, especially in light of the fact that the solar cell maker could be kicked off the technology-heavy Nasdaq.
"There is a significant air of uncertainty and a cloud over the company," said Eric A. Prouty, an analyst with the Boston-based investment firm of Adams, Harkness & Hill.
The company's stock fell nearly 13 percent on Thursday, from $3.56 to $3.10. It has fallen 61 percent since the start of the year.
AstroPower bills itself as the world's largest independent maker of solar electric power products for homes. The company employs 575 full-timers in Delaware and 650 employees worldwide, down from 2001 when it had 615 employees in the state and 740 workers worldwide.
Despite the company's troubles, the solar cell industry remains strong, Prouty said, with Europe and the Western United States leading the demand for the kind of products AstroPower specializes in.
The company's stock price began tumbling last summer, falling 47 percent on Aug. 2, the day after officials said second-quarter earnings fell almost 78 percent from 2001. When third-quarter earnings were announced in November, showing another 44 percent decline over 2001 figures, the stock price fell an additional 17 percent to $6.71.
Then, earlier this year, AstroPower said it could not file the financial data on time because it had to further evaluate its 2002 revenues. The company has said it is likely to restate earnings for 2002 and possibly for 2001.
In the past two months, two shareholder lawsuits were filed in U.S. District Court in Wilmington, both claiming that company founder Allen M. Barnett and Chief Financial Officer Thomas J. Stiner artificially inflated the company's value by giving out "false, misleading and incomplete information."
Michael Markowski, director of research for StockDiagnostics.com, said his company has concluded that AstroPower will go out of business sometime this year.
"They're not generating any cash from their operations," Markowski said, referring to financial data the company filed last year. "Their numbers are all suspect. The thing is subject to collapse."
The company's decline has caught some local observers by surprise. In April, as the company's stock price continued its slide, the Delaware office of the U.S. Small Business Administration announced it was honoring Barnett with an award for entrepreneurial success.
Barnett, who has declined to comment on his company's financial troubles, did not attend the May 5 awards ceremony, instead he sent Gourley.
Reach Steven Church at 324-2786 or schurch@delawareonline.com.
