Lost billions in market value
Investors attack Swiss battery company
Energy storage by lifting large weights. An impressive idea that first caused a sensation on the stock exchange and which is now threatened with a crash.
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Pictures from the Energy Vault test facility in Ticino: The idea is …
Start-up companies that are worth more than a billion on the stock exchange are considered unicorns. A rare species, to which the Swiss battery company Energy Vault has belonged since its IPO in February in New York. The market valuation of the Ticino company climbed to CHF 1.5 billion.
With the high flight it is over for the first. Energy Vault has lost over a billion francs in value. For the time being, there is no special designation for the achievement of a stumbling unicorn.
doubts about its effectiveness
The company’s idea is as impressive as it is simple: using excess energy, heavy weights are pulled up on a kind of crane. If the power grid needs energy, the concrete blocks are lowered again using gravity and the resulting energy is fed into the grid. An ideal power storage device – at least in theory.
In practice, the technology does not appear to have proven itself, at least that is what critical investors believe. There are also doubts about Energy Vault’s growth and revenue plans. The share has been targeted by so-called short sellers, i.e. investors who are betting on falling prices.
Can management refute allegations?
In a recently published report, the activist shortseller Bleecker Street Research accused the management of deceiving the shareholders when announcing new electricity storage projects, as the German “Handelsblatt” writes. Bleecker Street Research calls the idea a “scientific project for middle school”.
Other shorts have also criticized the management of Energy Vault.
The central question: Can the management refute the allegations and present a credible growth strategy? Or are the critics right? Then a further slide in the stock is inevitable. (ko)