(Bloomberg) -- Investors shocked at the money they're losing on positions in Steinhoff International Holdings NV have a lot of company in the analyst community.
The shares fell as much as 62 percent on Wednesday after Chief Executive Officer Markus Jooste resigned amid a probe of accounting irregularities. The market value of the furniture retailer, which is based in South Africa but listed in Germany, has dropped to 4.5 billion euros ($5.3 billion) from about 20 billion euros in June. Still, through Tuesday, Steinhoff was among the stocks on which equity analysts were most bullish.
Among the 50 stocks in Germany's midcap MDAX index with the highest aggregate recommendations, Steinhoff is the only one to decline this year. The others handed investors returns between 30 percent and 50 percent. Even the experts were caught off guard by the Steinhoff probe, which had been brewing since 2015 but took a new dimension Wednesday.
As of Tuesday, 10 analysts rated Steinhoff shares at buy and eight rated them hold. The company had no sell recommendations. Some analysts have placed their ratings under review. The average share-price target by 11 analysts Wednesday is 4.82 euros, which the shares would have to more than quadruple to reach.
To contact the reporter on this story: Richard Weiss in Frankfurt at rweiss5@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Eric Pfanner at epfanner1@bloomberg.net, John J. Edwards III
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