The Taipei Exchange yesterday said it would continue to suspend trading of XPEC Entertainment Inc (樂陞科技) shares and demand that the game developer resubmit its financial statements within three months for the sake of shareholders’ interests.
The stock exchange’s decision came one day after the troubled game developer filed audited financial statements for last year and last quarter.
“The Taipei Exchange has decided to extend XPEC’s trading suspension, as it has deemed that the firm did not fully disclose the financial impacts of its overseas investments in its recently filed financial statements,” the Taipei Exchange said in a statement.
XPEC late on Monday night filed its audited earnings for the past four quarters, in an effort to prevent delisting by the stock exchange for not submitting audited financial statements.
Trading of the firm’s shares has been suspended since Nov. 17 last year because XPEC failed to file audited financial statements for the third quarter on time and failed to resubmit earnings results for the second quarter of last year.
XPEC had difficulty in securing a new accounting firm to audit its financial results after Ernst & Young Taiwan on Oct. 24 last year terminated its contract with the game developer, saying that XPEC’s operations fall beyond the accounting firm’s professional and legal scope.
The Financial Supervisory Commission last month said that as XPEC had not filed audited financial statements for more than two quarters and trading of its shares had been suspended, the game developer would be delisted if it did not submit audited earnings results before today.
XPEC on Monday reported net losses of NT$4.88 billion (US$162.05 million at the current exchange rate) for last year, compared with net income of NT$458.59 million in 2015.
That translated into a loss per share of NT$29.45, compared with earnings per share of NT$3.38 in 2015, the company’s filings with the Taiwan Stock Exchange showed.
The firm remained in the red in the first quarter of this year, with net losses totaling NT$117.24 million, compared with a net profit of NT$12.74 million in the same period last year, the filing showed.
A NT$4.86 billion deal to acquire a 25.17 percent stake in XPEC was abandoned by Japanese firm Bai Chi Gan Tou Digital Entertainment Co (百尺竿頭) in August last year, leaving XPEC’s operations spiraling out of control.
XPEC chairman Aaron Hsu (許金龍) and former board director Hsieh Tung-po (謝東波) were in January indicted by prosecutors on charges of manipulating the company’s stock price over Bai Chi’s failed acquisition.
XPEC is to convene a general meeting on June 16 in Taipei to update shareholders on operations.
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