Barito’s wild swings – the most extreme among companies worldwide valued at US$50 billion or more based on 30-day volatility – have perplexed professional analysts, stoked fevered trading among retail investors and challenged regulators’ attempts to bring more order to an increasingly volatile market.
Its share-price chart resembles that of an emerging-market penny stock: a 1,200% surge punctuated by two crashes of more than 40% — all in the span of less than nine months.
But PT Barito Renewables Energy is Indonesia’s biggest company by market capitalisation - a US$85 billion ($115.45 billion) geothermal power producer controlled by one of the country’s richest tycoons.
