Amper stuck in nine-year trading range between €0.17 and €0.34

Amper repeats cycle: From €0.169 to dreaming of €0.34

How many times can a company repeat the same script on the stock market before investors stop believing it? Amper, headquartered in Pozuelo de Alarcón and trading below one euro, has been doing this for almost nine years. Rebounds from support levels that seemed final, contracts that generate excitement, crashes blamed on hidden hands, and a community of small investors holding positions at prices that are always about to return. Anyone who has trinc the stock on the continuous market knows the pattern: Amper repeats its cycle, and no one knows how many more times.

The October 2017 rebound: 25,000 shares at €0.21 and an Aena contract

The start is recognizable. Entries at €0.21 after a bounce in the upward channel and a support level that seemed solid as granite. Others added packages at €0.219, €0.229, and €0.244, up to an average position of €0.23 for 120,000 shares. The dominant narrative then: "Once the fuss over Catalonia and Abengoa passes... this is going to fly, gentlemen." That same month, the company's security unit won a contract with Aena, and the stock broke through €0.206 and €0.218 in a single session. Closing at €0.20, with the 200-session moving average within reach.

In parallel, the range that defined the stock for years emerged: sideways movement between €0.2 and €0.26. Entering in the middle, according to repeated experience, is equivalent to playing roulette. The theoretically reliable support later dropped to €0.169.

Peru, Andahuaylas, and a contract doubling all Latin America

In summer 2018 came another of those announcements meant to change everything. Amper won a $5.5 million contract in Peru. Added to the Andahuaylas hospital project, worth $2.5 million (€2.14 million), the group exceeded "already double the total contracting achieved across all Latin America in fiscal year 2017."

The market reacted sluggishly. The stock had been moving sideways for more than two months and ended up piercing the resistance at €0.3392. "It seems my ignorance is confirmed," summarized someone who had read the breakout as the definitive start. Others spoke of consolidation around €0.340 before the surge. The surge came. It wasn't the good one.

Shareholders' meeting: spending halved and twelve companies on the radar

The meeting served to put restructuring in black and white. Cut in corporate expenses from €4.5 to €2.5 million; cash inflow from the sale of Pacífico; payment of the last bankruptcy debt, €13 million, which was supposed to open bank financing. The company was analyzing twelve entities to acquire, aiming to enter sectors with wider margins than Nervión's, which were very narrow. Two bonus payments in shares for directors worth 1.3% of capital were also approved.

The problem, they said, was that acquisitions were small: seven-million-euro purchases that don't move the needle and that, in the short term, the market itself interprets as a drag. The thesis of the patient shareholder —"what doesn't break will eventually rise, guaranteed"— rested on that silent accumulation of material facts.

Why does Amper trade below one euro despite its numbers?

Because, holders argue, the market doesn't value business improvement but punishes the stock regardless of it. Much of the shareholder base openly speaks of manipulation: someone with the capacity to move the price would push it down to buy cheaper. It should be emphasized: this suspicion is not backed by any public evidence and functions more as collective consolation than diagnosis. The less epic reading points out that a stock below one euro carries a structural discount that no small news corrects.

2019 results, pandemic, and CEO departure

On February 26, 2020, the results for fiscal year 2019 were published. Expectations were high, reception poor: they weren't liked. Weeks later, the pandemic raised an uncomfortable question about the impact on fundamentals. To health uncertainty was added the departure of the CEO, celebrated without disguise by much of the shareholder base, who read it as the end of one stage and the hint of another.

Share buyback, wind energy, and a €0.34 still on the horizon

The last stretch of the cycle arrives with two new elements. Amper closed the sale of Pacífico businesses and announced a share buyback plan. And the stock surged upon joining the wind sector boom, a sectoral push nobody had included in the 2018-2020 plan accounts. With the share around €0.24 and Brexit as new background noise, targets remain the same as two years ago. "I want €0.34 minimum," wrote a shareholder with 50,000 shares. Another, caught at €0.34 for a year, had it clear: hold.

Right now, with the price in the low zone of the usual range, the question returns to being the one from 2017. And so does the answer. This time yes.