HTC Shares Tumble Amid CFO Change and Galaxy S III Announcement
HTC’s shares plummeted today after a change in the Taiwanese company’s CFO. Today, HTC announced that Chia-Lin Chang, a former Motorola engineer and partner at Goldman Sachs in Taiwan, will be taking over for Winston Yung as the company’s new chief financial officer. After this news, shares for the company dropped at much as 6 percent. It probably didn’t help much that Android rival, Samsung, had also announced the unveiling date for the Samsung Galaxy S III.
HTC hasn’t been doing so well, ever since Samsung’s wildly popular Galaxy S II claimed “king of the Android mountain,” dominating the market share towards the last half of 2011. HTC is the 5th largest smartphone maker in the world and recently reported a 70% loss in net profits during Q1 of this year ($152 million). VP of Masterlink Investment Advisory in Taipei mentioned that, “When a company changes its CFO, it often indicates that the company’s operations or financials have reached a bottleneck.”
Although sales for HTC’s One line haven’t been too great in Europe, according to analysts, let’s hope HTC can pick up steam once their One line reaches the US in the coming weeks. Something tells me it wont be easy with Android fanboys clamoring for Samsung’s latest flagship.
[Reuters]