What happened
Shares of fuel cell manufacturer Bloom Energy (BE 3.81%) suffered mightily in trading Thursday, closing the day down nearly 8% on concerns over an earnings restatement and a downgrade, related to that news, announced by KeyBanc.
Today, Bloom stock is enjoying a pretty sizable bounce back, with its shares climbing 10.9% through 11:45 a.m. EST on Friday.
Image source: Getty Images.
So what
There's the obvious (and cynical) explanation: More than 15% of Bloom Energy's shares are sold short, and a lot of short-sellers made a lot of money when the shares collapsed Thursday. Chances are, at least some of those investors are taking their profits today by buying back Bloom stock and closing their short positions.
But there's another possible explanation for the rebound. In conjunction with announcing its restatement, and in a probable attempt to limit the damage from that announcement, management reassured investors that the restatement "has no impact on Bloom's total cash and cash equivalents or cash flows, and the adjustment does not impact the economic terms or substance" of its managed services agreements, whereby Bloom offers sales financing to its customers.
Now what
Bloom also announced that in its upcoming fourth-quarter earnings release, it expects to report that its backlog of orders has increased by 43% since this time last year, and that these new orders are worth about $1.1 billion in future product and installation revenue.
KeyBanc called this news "encouraging," and you can see why. Given that through all of the last year, Bloom's revenue was less than $900 million, the addition of $1.1 billion in new business suggests that it is still growing briskly -- restatement or no restatement.
