Beijing-based LeTV, or Leshi Internet Information and Technology Corp., asked a Hua An Fun Management Co-affiliated analyst to apologize for “misleading” comments on the firm’s sales figures.
LeTV posted the statement on its Weibo account following the airing of comments made by Shanghai-based analyst Yang Xiaolei on a China Business News (CBN) channel program on Friday.
Though Yang said that the firm "did not engage in significant financial statement fraud," his insights suggested that regulators should investigate LeTV's public data.
Yang aired his speculations that there could have been a 10-fold gap between the preorder figures of LeTV and Xiaomi smartphones.
"LeTV announced it achieved 10 million smartphone preorders in 10 days, while 10-day preorders for Xiaomi Note [a popular brand] is only a million units," Yang shared.
"LeTV claimed it had sold several million units of smart TV sets, but information from other channels indicated that the actual shipments were only half of what the company announced," Yang added.
According to LeTV, Yang was "spreading totally inaccurate information" and "disturbing the capital market." The firm has asked the analyst to apologize and correct his statements.
After the show was aired, Yang posted on his Weibo account that what he shared are his personal opinions and reiterated that he did not think that the technology firm was involved in a financial statement fraud.
Meanwhile, for iiMedia Research CEO Zhang Yi, "it is hard to tell if LeTV has exaggerated its sales data since there is no authoritative third-party sales survey," noting otherwise that sales exaggeration has been a perennial issue in the online retail segment.
Apart from sales figures, Yang's comments also targeted LeTV's stock performance and advised against pouring in investments in firms such as LeTV. He described them as "too good at telling stories."
The firm has been seeing a share slump after CEO Jia Yueting sold around 1.9 percent of LeTV's shares during the first three days of this month for 2.5 billion yuan.
On June 4, the company's share price fell 3.04 percent and closed at 76.58 yuan.