Just Energy is largely unknown to many investors, but it’s infamous to others. For years, Just Energy paid a huge dividend, and also had a juicy preferred share stock offering. Yield-seeking investors plowed into these vehicles to boost their income. However, the underlying entity paying out those dividends wasn’t sturdy.
Just Energy built a bit of an odd business model: It buys electricity from power utilities and then resells it to power consumers at a fixed cost over a long-term contract. The thinking was that end users don’t like volatile energy prices, and would be willing to use a third party to flatten out pricing risk. It’s unclear, however, whether there was wide demand for this service.
Over the years, Just Energy was dogged by reports of pushy door-to-door sales techniques and misleading marketing tactics. Just Energy shifted to more brick-and-mortar retail locations to sell its services, but this apparently didn’t work either
We know as much because the company’s financials continued to spiral downward. It suspended the previously sacrosanct dividend last year. And this year, it announced that it will be reorganizing the company. To be clear, at least so far, this isn’t an outright bankruptcy where the existing stock gets wiped out.
In the recapitalization, the lenders and new investors are plowing hundreds of millions of dollars into the company. This will give it enough wiggle room to potentially turn around the business. Meanwhile, holders of current JE stock will get 28.8% of the company’s equity post-recapitalization That may not sound awful; 29% is a reasonable chunk. However, it’s still worth far less than the current share price is going for. The company will also be implementing a 1:33 reverse split, meaning that 1000 old shares of JE stock will be just 30 going forward. So don’t look at the 40 cent share price and think it’s cheap. A huge reverse split is coming. Additionally, it’s far from clear Just Energy’s basic third-party energy retail business is even practical in a post-pandemic world.
Investors should scratch this one off their penny stocks watchlist for good