The US-based forensic short-seller Hindenburg Research might have found its new victim in Block, a company run by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, the Adani group, its old victim, seems to be making a recovery. Friday marks two months of Hindenburg’s explosive report on the ports-to-power major. While a few of Adani group shares are down up to 73 per cent since then, stock prices of a few others are on the mend, data showed.

The January 24 report by Hindenburg, its biggest in terms of significance, alleged accounting frauds, money laundering and stock manipulation at Adani group companies. While the Adani group denied all allegations, Adani group shares such as Adani Total Gas, Adani Enterprises, Adani Green Energy and Adani Transmission took severe beating, only to see some recovery of late.

While, the market capitalisation of Adani group recovered from a sub-Rs 7 lakh crore on February 27 to Rs 9,89,736 crore as on Friday’s intraday levels, it still is down 48.44 per cent from January 24 closing of Rs 19,19,888 lakh crore.

Adani Total Gas has lost 73 per cent of its market value. The Adani company commanded Rs 1,13,549.89 crore m-cap on Friday against Rs 4,27,326 crore on January 24. Adani Transmission is down 59 per cent. Flagship Adani Enterprises’ shares are down 47 per cent while those of Adani Green Energy are down 46 per cent. NDTV (down 29 per cent), Adani Power (down 28 per cent) and Adani Wilmar (down 27 per cent) have lost over one-fourth of their market values. Ambuja Cements and ACC have seen 25 per cent erosion in their market values while Adani Ports has been the least impacted stock with 14 per cent drop. 

Hindenburg Research has built reputation over the last couple of years. It is the same short-seller, which in June 2019 had alleged that NYSE-listed Eros International’s auditor, Grant Thornton, failed to apply even basic scrutiny to Eros’ financials, and said “the price of both the BSE and NYSE stock (of the company) would end up worthless”.

A Bloomberg report in January suggested that 30 companies that Hindenburg targeted since 2020 on average lost about 15 per cent the next day and 26 per cent, on an average, six months later.

As far as Adani stocks are concerned, the selloff in Adani shares had led to many of the group stocks falling below Rs 1,00,000 crore m-cap mark. In fact, at one point, only one Adani stock commanded a m-cap of over Rs 1 lakh crore against six as on January 24. Today, except Adani Power, rest 5 stocks namely Adani Total Gas

Adani Enterprises, Adani Transmission, Adani Green Energy and Adani Ports command mcaps of over Rs 1 lakh crore.

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