A £6 billion payments firm kicked an analyst out of its earnings briefing after he wrote negative reports about the company
Chris Lee, the CFO of PAX Global - a £5.7 billion firm that makes electronic payment terminals for use in shops - asked Macquarie analyst Timothy Lam to leave the meeting and refused to start the earnings briefing until Lam had left the room, according to a report from Bloomberg.
"In a video obtained by Bloomberg News, PAX Global Technology Ltd. CFO Chris Lee can be seen standing over a seated Timothy Lam and ordering him to leave the conference room on Wednesday," Bloomberg's Kana Nishizawa wrote on Thursday morning.
Lam has covered PAX Global since April this year and has held an "underweight" rating - urging clients to sell - on the company's stock throughout that time. According to Bloomberg, when Lam first initiated coverage, he was the only one of 17 analysts covering the company to put a negative rating on the stock. Currently, Lam and Leping Huang of Nomura are the only two analysts covering PAX to give it a negative rating.
"Before the analysts briefing meeting started, the company's CFO asked a sell-side analyst to leave the conference room," Huang wrote in a note titled "CFO conduct disrupts shareholder value" following the incident. "While we do not judge this dispute, we think this may hurt PAX Global's shareholder value," he said.
According to Bloomberg's report, Lee said on the phone that he asked Lam to leave because PAX disputes part of Macquarie's most recent report on the company, not because it has assigned a negative rating, adding that Lam had not been invited to the meeting.
PAX shares fell on the news, closing down by 2.5% on the day. Here's the chart:
