The shares of Plug Power Inc. fell by more than 10% during Tuesday’s extended session after the fuel cell company said it will have to restate its financial statements for the 2018 and 2019 fiscal years, as well as some recent quarterly returns.
Plug it into the socket,
said it found errors in accounting mainly related to non-cash items, including how it classified certain costs, resulting in less research and development expenditure and a corresponding increase in the cost of revenues; the reported carrying amount of right-of-use assets; losses incurred for certain service contracts; and impairment of certain long-term assets.
It did not notice any wrongdoing, it said.
“Adjustment accounting is complex and technical and includes important assessments about the application of US GAAP, given the innovative nature of the company’s operations and its leadership in a new and rapidly developing industry,” said Plug Power in a statement.
The company will also reformulate the quarterly applications for 2019 and 2020. As a result of the fixes, Plug Power will not file its Form 10K Tuesday, as scheduled, it said. It said it will do this “as soon as possible.”
“The revised accounting will change the way the company accounts for certain transactions and items, but is not expected to affect the company’s cash position, operations or the economics of commercial arrangements,” said Plug Power.
The company said it continues to expect to meet some of its previously set goals, including gross bills of $ 475 million by 2021, $ 750 million by 2022 and $ 1.7 billion by 2024.
Plug Power also said that at the time of publishing its fourth-quarter and full-year 2020 results, it had no material issues before the audit. Following the February results and during the preparation of the audit, both the company and the auditor KPMG identified the issues that were not “the result of overriding controls or misconduct”.
Shares of Plug Power are up nearly 1,450% in the past 12 months, compared to a gain of around 66% for the S&P 500 index SPX,
in the same period.