On 05 July 2012, NASDAQ (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations) ordered an end to trading of Hoku stock, pending “additional information”.

NASDAQ requires that companies traded in their exchange can not go below one U.S. dollar per share for a set period of time, or that company will be de-listed.  But Hoku Corp was guaranteed doom when, at the beginning of June, a “do not trade” warning was issued to investors!

Rumors are now rampant that Hoku will declare bankruptcy, but get a clue, when a company announces it’s “restructuring” it’s a real good chance that bankruptcy is close behind.

I’ve been following the slow motion Hoku Materials train wreck in Pocatello, Idaho, since day one.  This was because I learned that some of the board members of Hoku have a history of starting up corporations on paper, then folding them for technical reasons after selling off stock in the paper corps.

You can search my posts, but briefly; the city of Pocatello, and Bannock County, bent over backwards to get the company to settle in the area, including I believe a $200,000 property tax break on land which only cost $200,000.  This was unprecedented for Pocatello, because they had been actually running off businesses, and good paying jobs, because they (city officials) refused to make concessions (the big job loss that started the whole decline for the Pocatello/Chubbuck was refusing to give Union Pacific more land to make Pocatello UP’s new huge Pacific Northwest depot!) .

From day one of construction Hoku has failed to pay contractors on time, or at all! The big guy, JH Kelly, is now using legal action to seize the property!

Hoku was also consistently late paying their massive electric bills to Idaho Power.  At one point Tianwei New Energy Holdings announced at the end of 2011 that polysilicon production had begun, however, Idaho Power refused to provide the electricity because Hoku had not met its contractual obligations, so no production was ever started!

Hoku turned to Chinese companies to bail them out of their financial woes.  They became a subsidiary of Tianwei New Energy Holdings, which is an affiliate of China South Industries Group Corporation (CSGC).  All of Hoku Material’s contracts are with Chinese solar product companies hoping to increase their business in the United States.

The hopes of Chinese solar companies, and indirectly Hoku, were finally dashed because the Obama Administration imposed high tariffs on any Chinese made solar power product!

At least 120 of the 150 Hoku Materials employees were laid off, but the massive 50 football fields long polysilicon factory (built at the end of a dead end residential road, those people are not happy) was to employ several hundreds of people once it got up and running.  One year, I remember, in one of the monthly city of Chubbuck newsletters the incompetent mayor excitedly reminding people of the boom in home sales when the factory was finished. It was in response to residents questioning the allowing of new home developments, when the housing market was so bad.

So who’s gonna buy those new homes now Mr Mayor?

 SOLAR COMPANY HOKU CORPORATION STOCK now WORTHLESS