Ouch!
“” Ballard Power, founded in 1979 and pivoted to fuel cells in the late 1980s, has similarly never reported an
annual profit, losing an average of $55 million a year since 2000, amounting to more than $1.3 billion in
cumulative losses, while its stock price languishes near penny levels.
FuelCell Energy, public since 1992, has amassed losses of $680 million between 2019 and 2024, averaging
about $113 million per year, also never turning a profit in its more than five decades of operation. These three
firms show how even decades of effort, hundreds of millions in subsidies and repeated technological pivots cannot overcome the structural weakness of hydrogen markets.
Most recently PlugPower announced a stunning 200 to one reverse stock split. That’s among the largest
single point in time reverse stock splits, although not the largest overall. FuelCell Energy has been desperately trying to keep its stock above $1. Most recently it reverse split 30 to one in late 2024, but its
history of occasional splits and frequent reverse splits nets out to a 720 to one reverse split.
That said, Plug Power’s fiscal position is about what you would expect from a company that has bled money for decades. While the Board approved the stratospheric reverse split, it didn’t approve issuing more shares for sale to try to raise money. The firm only has the loan from the US DOE for hydrogen electrolysis facilities that are facing serious headwinds under the Trump Administration. While the loans were guaranteed under the Biden Administration and appear not to have been yanked, that doesn’t mean the hydrogen facilities will be built, that the loan funds will be disbursed or that Plug Power will be able to pay them back. My bet is mostly no to all three.””
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