Yongye International: Why This Stock's Story Is Too Good to Be True
Dreams can be beautiful, but reality can be cruel. Yongye CEO Wu Zishen
Investors think they've found a dream stock in the apparently cheap shares of Yongye International (YONG). A closer look, however, reveals an odd and peculiar story of a company with a murky past and an uncertain future.
Long a staple of Hollywood movies, the story is familiar. An unknown, previously failed businessman finds redemption in a miracle product and fashions a remarkable business around it, disproving the doubting critics every step of the way.
At Yongye, you have the opportunity to invest in just such a story, as Mr. Zishen has been transformed from a rather ordinary man with an undistinguished resume into a visionary man who is now leading a company that is allegedly more than doubling its revenues every year with a game-changing fertilizer additive.
The Yongye story's central character is the charismatic, nearly-messianic figure of CEO Wu Zishen. The China Daily newspaper reported that Mr. Zishen was driven into the agriculture industry after a moving experience:
Once my colleagues and I were carrying out an investigation in Tongliao, a city in Inner Mongolia, and a sandstorm blew up," Wu said. "We went to the house of a local farmer for shelter. I was shocked at what I witnessed. "The family of five only had two pairs of trousers to wear and their miserable life was something that I had only read about in textbooks. I used to think the poverty of Chinese
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