When a CEO starts giving price targets for his company’s stock and publicly lashes out at investment bankers who helped float his IPO, it’s… well… not a good sign. iChinaStock reports that Guoqing Li, the CEO of Beijing based Dangdang (NYSE: DANG), told a Chinese reporter:
I think Dangdang is now extremely undervalued. Even the opening price of $16 undervalued us in my opinion. Others think a PE of 104× is very high, but I think we should be at a PE of 150×, as in our first quarter financial report our profits increased by 200%, so they should give us the 150× valuation. I think the appropriate price of Dangdang should be $19, $22, which is my target price. Of course [the investment bank] didn’t allow us to price at that level, so I yelled at them and hated them being idiots even when the price was $16, and now apparently the price is $12, $14 an extreme undervaluation. But different people have different thoughts. These are attributable to the overall environment now.
Dangdang is an eCommerce company that some have called ‘the Amazon of China’. But we don’t recall Jeff Bezos hating on bankers after Amazon’s IPO.
No Covestor models held DANG as of 7/11/11.
Hat tip: Herb Greenberg, who knows a thing or two about warning signs.
Sources:
“Dangdang CEO Says His Firm is Undervalued, Sets $22 Target Price” iChinaStock.com 7/12/11 http://news.ichinastock.com/2011/07/dangdang-ceo-says-his-firm-is-undervalued-sets-22-target-price/
“Hot IPO: Dangdang, the Amazon of China, Soars 86.9% in Debut” Peter Cohan, DailyFinance 12/9/10 http://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/12/09/hot-ipo-dangdang-the-amazon-of-china-soars-86-9-in-debut/
