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Is Advanced Battery Technologies Living on a Prayer?

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Chinese stocks of any form can't catch a break -- reverse merger or not. The question of the day is: Do they even deserve one?

The management team at Advanced Battery Technologies (Nasdaq: ABAT  ) seems to think so. Just last week the manufacturer of rechargeable polymer lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles and scooters authorized a stock buyback of up to $10 million. Management at the recently troubled company promised to use the share repurchases to maximize shareholder value. After wondering what could possibly be so wrong about that, I came to only one conclusion -- everything!

Like countless Chinese reverse mergers of late, it has only taken one potential whistleblower to potentially spoil the parade. To date, we've seen claims of questionable accounting at Rino International, China-Biotics, Shengda Tech, Harbin Electric (Nasdaq: HRBN  ) , Puda Coal (AMEX: PUDA  ) , and countless others. Another name we can add to the list is Advanced Battery Technologies.

In late March the company was the target of a bearish report by Variant View Research, which highlighted 12 reasons to short it. To summarize, the report questioned whether the company's customer arrangements even exist, while also questioning how it could have grown revenue as quickly as it has without introducing a revolutionary technology. It doesn't help that Advanced Battery recently entered into a $20 million acquisition of a company that its chairman, Fu Zhiguo, once held an executive position in -- potentially netting him a nice payday.

On paper, based on reported results from Advanced Battery, the company seems too good to be true. The company is trading at just a fraction of its book value and purportedly has $86 million of cash in the bank. Then again, I have to wonder why a company trading below its cash value would choose to initiate a stock buyback of only $10 million, when a significantly larger amount of cash supposedly exists in the coffers.

Needless to say, Chinese reverse mergers leave a lot to be desired for the common investor. Too many bad apples have spoiled it for the bunch. It will be quite some time and many auditors down the road before investors feel safe investing their hard-earned money in these companies again -- myself included. Advanced Battery is going to need more than just a $10 million buyback to woo optimists back into the stock.

Are you putting your money to work in any Chinese names right now? Let us know in the comments section below and consider tracking Advanced Battery Technologies with our free watchlist tool to keep up on the latest news with the company.

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Fool contributor Sean Williams has no material interest in any companies mentioned in this article. You can follow him on CAPS under the screen name TMFUltraLong. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy that only deals with facts.


Comments from our Foolish Readers

Help us keep this a respectfully Foolish area! This is a place for our readers to discuss, debate, and learn more about the Foolish investing topic you read about above. Help us keep it clean and safe. If you believe a comment is abusive or otherwise violates our Fool's Rules, please report it via the Report this Comment Report this Comment icon found on every comment.

  • Report this Comment On July 08, 2011, at 3:30 PM, azumpire wrote:

    Actually, and Technically ABAT is a brilliant buy down at these levels. Being able to pick up shares for under $1.00 will be an easy double before the year is over. Not too many big board stocks come along that allow you to net 100% in less than 6 months. ABAT will allow this, just based on a technical standpoint in my opinion, which is why I comfortably added 50,000 shares of this stock to my portfolio for under $1.00

  • Report this Comment On July 08, 2011, at 4:46 PM, j1d2j3 wrote:

    this guy apparently is a primarily a short seller, check his previous negative articles

  • Report this Comment On July 08, 2011, at 7:58 PM, shukae wrote:

    You wrote:

    "I have to wonder why a company trading below its cash value would choose to initiate a stock buyback of only $10 million, when a significantly larger amount of cash supposedly exists in the coffers."

    The reason is very simple, before you buy at $ 20 million, you must buy at $ 10 million, a company, that executes repurchase of shares, must adhere to very stiff rules, they can't buy any amount, at any time. In addition, if they want to buy maximum amount of shares, they have to do it slowly and carefully. Such a process may take a long time, even more than a year. Furthermore , they can decide on additional amount, at any moment.

  • Report this Comment On July 08, 2011, at 9:36 PM, calm2stormy wrote:

    10 million seems like a high percentage with 76 million shares out. Comparatively aapl has 900 million shares out.

    China can also tell their workers they work for 2 cents an hour

  • Report this Comment On July 09, 2011, at 2:52 AM, RealDutch wrote:

    The main reason why they are "only" buying back $10M worth of stock is simple. They are investing $83M in the third production base.

    Proof here

    http://www.globenewswire.com/newsroom/news.html?d=220476

    Foto's of the development of the third production base here

    http://www.zqpt.com/en/News/ShowInfo.aspx?ID=27

    Anything else the author would like to know?

    Didn't fink so.

    Do engage brain before writing an article that is of no use to anyone but the criminal short sellers.

  • Report this Comment On July 09, 2011, at 1:14 PM, RealDutch wrote:

    Nothing yet. Perhaps Sean went fishing with his granddad today.

  • Report this Comment On July 10, 2011, at 1:35 AM, Rdavis2013 wrote:

    This author is a real fool. I mean it in a bad way!! Just going by what have been said, and not during your own homework is truly foolish. Why would anyone write about something that someone else said, it doesn't make good sense...

  • Report this Comment On July 10, 2011, at 1:37 AM, Rdavis2013 wrote:

    Do your homework!!

  • Report this Comment On July 11, 2011, at 9:21 AM, summertimeVA wrote:

    HAHAHA azumpire you must be very rich to buy more shares at such a "good" price, lets hope for you that the market rises, I am down 77% and counting but I must say that the author does raise some good points, in the comments section I dont see anything less that bad mouthing, bickering and trying to get others to buy.....

    Chinese companies ahhhhhhhhhhhhh BYD rings a bell, what else.....if you dont have any idea about China, double accounting, fixed schemes in the third world then let sleeping dogs lie

  • Report this Comment On July 11, 2011, at 10:02 AM, AndrewJ34 wrote:

    Wow, look at all of that evidence pointing to ABAT's legtimacy.

    Poster 'RealDutch' provides a link to a company article ("Source: Advanced Battery Technologies, Inc.") which clearly states the CEO visits the new site daily ("Chairman of the Board and CEO, Mr. Fu Zhiguo, conducts daily on-site inspections"), and another link with photos of the new site - but the caption that accompanies the photos states nothing about a production facility or factory AND no photo of the CEO in any of the pictures.

    That seems very odd. The entire point of this new ABAT purchase was to produce $150 Million worth of product in a factory; yet, no factory mention in the caption?

    And with the CEO being at the new site every day, surely he would proudly take advantage of some photo ops in front of his newest, largest achievement; yet, he is not in any of the pictures.

    And of course, the majority of investment money has 'spoken', with the stock price trading around $1 per share.

    Ultimately, the decision to invest money in ABAT depends on whether or not you believe what this Chinese company is telling you.

    And how honest and trustworthy do you feel the Chinese government and its people are? It's not like they would purposely manipulate and/or hide facts, would they?

    Commenter 'Calm2Stormy' apparently feels he/she 'knows' how the Chinese government works, providing the comment, "China can also tell their workers they work for 2 cents an hour" ... so if that's the case, China can tell their company executives to state whatever financial data sounds good despite it being truthful or not ... or does 'Calm2Stormy' also believe China 'draws the line' at some point? (which of course would be contradictory)

    If CEO's of corporations in the 'free world' (USA) have been known to manipulate their financials, why would China be any different? And how much more different could it be in a communist country like China? Is China a reputable, respectful country, allowing 'free speech' to be freely distributed, not only amongst their own people, but out to other countries of the world as well?

    Is China happy with their financial status in the world, or are they looking to dominate the world financially, taking money from people of other countries both honestly and deceptively?

    And once any deception is discovered, what recourse would a non-Chinese person have to recover losses/damages, let alone a Chinese person?

    Just presenting some COMMON SENSE thinking, for you to do with as you wish.

  • Report this Comment On July 11, 2011, at 12:15 PM, RealDutch wrote:

    Andrew wants to see the CEO in the pictures of the new production facility. Would that be just the CEO or the whole management team???

    And you know what Einstein said about "common sense".

    I quote

    "Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen."

    It couldn't be more appropriate here.

  • Report this Comment On July 12, 2011, at 3:54 PM, commonplus wrote:

    I do have to agree that all investors should be alerted with Chinese stocks. I recently lose a lot of my money in investing into Chinese stocks. However, I do believe that ABAT is a potential profitable penny stock.

  • Report this Comment On July 14, 2011, at 1:31 AM, patrick51210 wrote:

    Has anyone heard about the class action lawsuit against ABAT?

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