SUPER MICRO COMPUTER INC stock has had a rough week, with shares down double digits over four straight days. The artificial intelligence server maker looks to be breaking its previous yo-yo pattern where the stock has fallen, just to rise again the next day.
Shares, trading under the ticker SMCI , were down 5% in early trading Friday. It’s on course to end the week down 17%.
The stock has been on a wild ride this year. It hit an all-time closing high of $119 in mid-March to slump to $18 just eight months later. The latest drop came after its now previous auditor, Ernst & Young, resigned, saying it didn’t want to be associated with Super Micro’s financial statement, a decision Super Micro said it disagreed with.
The company has since appointed BDO its new auditor and said a board-appointed independent committee found no evidence of misconduct or fraud. Investors are still awaiting its delayed annual and quarterly reports, for which it last week secured an extension with Nasdaq to file by Feb. 25, thereby avoiding the immediate threat of delisting—another worry for investors.
At just under $37 a share, its stock price looks cheap compared with peers, currently fetching 12 times forward earnings, but this week’s stock price move indicates that isn’t enough for investors right now.
The likelihood that the company will be knocked out of the Nasdaq 100 —Nasdaq’s biggest nonfinancial companies—after markets close Friday has also weighed on shares.
Coming into Friday trading, the stock has still slightly outperformed the Nasdaq Composite index this year, with shares up 33.4% compared with the index, which is up 32.6%.
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