HTC Trading Below Cash Leaves Smartphone Brand With No Value ⇥ bloomberg.com

Tim Culpan, Bloomberg:

A 60 percent plunge in HTC Corp.’s stock this year pushed its market value to below its cash on hand. That means investors were effectively saying the smartphone maker’s brand, factories and buildings were worthless. […]

“HTC’s cash is the only asset of value to shareholders,” said Calvin Huang, who has a NT$46.50 price target on the stock at Sinopac Financial Holdings Co. in Taipei. “Most of the other assets shouldn’t be considered in their valuation because there’s more write-offs to come and the brand has no value.”

Ouch. Things change fast, but this is a real bummer. As far as I’m concerned, HTC has long been the only Android hardware manufacturer that has a semblance of taste in their industrial design. Yes, there’s a little bit of Apple-copycat stuff going on, like unibody aluminum shells and the use of Helvetica in some of their UIs, but it actually felt like they cared about that kind of stuff. Shame.