What happened
Azure Power Global (AZRE) had an awful Tuesday on the exchange, even by the standards of a generally declining market. The India-based renewable energy specialist saw its shares lose more than 26% of their value on the day, as it continued to feel the impact of a top-level executive resignation plus a whistleblower complaint and was socked by an analyst recommendation downgrade.
So what
A day after Azure announced the unexpected departure of CEO Harsh Shah and that whistleblower complaint (which dates from May), not to mention the fact that the renewable energy company will be late in filing its annual report, one prognosticator wasted little time changing his view on its prospects.
Credit Suisse's Maheep Mandloi cut his recommendation on Azure stock to underperform (read: sell) all the way down from the previous outperform (buy). Mandloi also took a monster axe to his price target, cutting it severely to $5 per share -- he had formerly gauged it as being worth $22.
The exit of Shah, who had only been in his position for two months, was only one concern the analyst had about Azure's future. In a new research note, he wrote of the "lack of visibility around long-term business targets/plans, limited clarity on financials audit/20F filing timeline, and weaker portfolio performance."
Now what
It's rare when a company experiences not one but several potentially cataclysmic, business-changing events at once. Unfortunately, none of these are positive for Azure, and at the moment, it's difficult to see how it'll crawl out of them without sustaining some damage to its reputation, its operations, its finances, or all three.
