Lawsuit Overview
November 11, 2020 - The case was voluntarily dismissed.
December 10, 2019 - An investor in shares of Baozun Inc. (NASDAQ: BZUN) filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York over alleged violations of Federal Securities Laws by Baozun Inc. in connection with certain allegedly false and misleading statements made between March 6, 2019 and November 20, 2019.
Shanghai, China based Baozun Inc. provides brand e-commerce service to brand partners in the People's Republic of China. Baozun Inc reported that its annual Total Revenue rose from over $4.14 billion in 2017 to over $5.39 billion in 2018 and that its Net Income increased from $208.86 million in 2017 to $269.71 million in 2018.
Then on November 21, 2019, Baozun Inc announced third quarter 2019 financial results that were lower than the market had been led to expect and provided dismal fourth quarter 2019 financial guidance, blaming, in large part, the adverse impact from terminating our service agreement with one electronics brand. Though Baozun did not disclose who that large electronics brand was, many in the financial media have suggested that it was Huawei. Shares of Baozun Inc. (NASDAQ: BZUN) declined from $54.97 per share in July 2019 to as low as $32.35 per share on December 23, 2019.
According to the complaint the plaintiff alleges on behalf of purchasers of Baozun Inc. (NASDAQ: BZUN) common shares between March 6, 2019 and November 20, 2019, that the defendants violated Federal Securities Laws.
More specifically, the plaintiff claims that between March 6, 2019 and November 20, 2019, the defendants failed to disclose that Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. ( Huawei ), a Chinese-based multi-national technology company, was one of the Company’s largest brand partners, on a historical basis, and paid more add-on fees for the work Baozun did for it, increasing the revenues Baozun received for Huawei work compared to the Company’s other brand partners. This caused Baozun to report outsized revenue growth during the first half of 2019, which would be abruptly cut off during the second half 2019, after Baozun restructured its relationship with Huawei, as Huawei took much of its online merchandizing in-house, and that as a result of this information being withheld from the market, the price of Baozun ADRs was artificially inflated between March 6, 2019 and November 20, 2019, allowing Baozun to sell at least 2.25 million ADRs in a registered public stock offering at $40 per ADR on or about April 10, 2019, raising $90 million, and close a concurrent offering of $225 million in aggregate principal amount of convertible senior notes due 2024 the same day, receiving net proceeds of approximately $269 million.