Reuters – PetroAlgae is one of those many clean-tech companies that seem to burn through cash faster than a Hummer goes through a gallon of gas. Yet something curious is going on with shares of this Melbourne, Florida-based company, which is hoping to make money from turning algae into oil.
Over the past month, the stock price of PetroAlgae has rocketed from $8 to as high as $32.75 on ultra-thin trading of the shares (as of late Monday it had fallen back to around $10).
PetroAlgae boasts a rather healthy $1 billion market value — after being as high as $3.4 billion earlier Monday — even though it has no revenues, a $34 million accumulated deficit and its auditor isn’t sure the company can continue as a going concern.