Noble

Noble: Shares in Noble fell to a low of $0.52 (-11.9%) today, its weakest point since Nov 2008, as the commodities trader enters a black-out period ahead of its 2Q results.

According to the SGX listing guide, companies should not repurchase their shares two weeks before quarterly earnings (1Q, 2Q, and 3Q) and one month before full year earnings release. Noble will be filing its 2Q15 results on 13 Aug after market closes.

Noble had been actively buying back its shares to support its share price over the past seven weeks. In total, the group has shelled out $131m or 14% of its cash hoard to build up a 2.8% stake by mopping up 191.8m shares in the open market. Notably, Noble has not invested in anything larger than this amount since 2011 when it acquired a US$140m alumina plant in Jamaica.

Noble’s crisis began in mid-Feb when it came under criticism from Iceberg Research about its accounting practices. Iceberg went as far as to call Noble the next “Enron” and primarily cited Noble’s valuation of its stake in Yancoal as particularly dubious. Muddy Waters and former Temasek director, Michael Dee chimed in as well, lambasting management, with the latter calling for Noble’s chairman to resign.

Adding fuel to the fire, S&P recently downgraded Noble’s credit rating outlook from stable to negative.The credit rating agency cited higher earnings volatility as the main reason for the downgrade.

Noble has since called for a review of its accounting practices by PricewaterhouseCoopers in July. However, as current market trends show, investors are still spooked by accounting concerns over the counter.

According to Bloomberg consensus, there are 6 Buy, 7 Hold, and 1 Sell calls on Noble with an average target price of $1.