Plug Power Needs a New Financial Dictionary

It almost felt like someone knew Plug Power's (NASDAQ: PLUG) news would be bad. Shares of hydrogen fuel cell pioneer Plug Power plunged more than 14% in daily trading Monday morning, ahead of the company's Q1 2022 earnings report released after market close. Once the news came out, Plug stock proceeded to sink a further 6% in after-hours trading.

How bad was the news? Well, Plug Power management had to come up with a brand-new financial metric -- one nearly unique in the annals of financial reporting, according to Google (part of Alphabet). Instead of the $144.5 million in sales and $0.16 per share loss Wall Street had forecast for it in Q1, Plug Power recorded Q1 sales of only $140.8 million and lost a whopping $0.27 per share -- more than twice the money Plug lost a year ago, a big "earnings miss" in Wall Street parlance.

The larger loss was largely attributed to natural gas prices that were up 13% sequentially in Q4 2021 (and which have continued to increase since) had "a direct effect on the average price paid per molecule by Plug." And more expensive natural gas means more expensive hydrogen molecules bought by Plug Power -- which hurt profit margins in the company's hydrogen fuel business.

Source Fool.com