During the pandemic, Plug Power was one of the hottest names on Wall Street. Green hydrogen was having a moment, government money was flying around like seagulls at a beach, and Plug was riding that high all the way from $3 in March 2020 to over $70 by early 2021… a blood pumping 2,000% gain. It was one of those “did you hear about this stock?” moments, and for a while, Plug Power was the clean energy Cinderella story everyone wanted a piece of.

It had all the buzzwords investors wanted: decarbonization, hydrogen economy, future of energy. Plug was powering forklifts for Amazon and Walmart, signing billion-dollar joint ventures with SK Group in South Korea, and teaming up with Renault to push hydrogen vans across Europe. Wall Street was hooked. Reddit was obsessed. And every finance YouTuber with a camera and a Robinhood account had it in their “Top 3 Stocks to Buy Now” video.

But just like Uncle Rico throwing footballs over mountains, Plug’s glory days are long gone. The stock’s now trading around $1.30… down more than 98% from its peak.

So what happened? Well, once the magic money printer stopped, executives found out fast that building the entire hydrogen economy from scratch is… expensive. There were project delays, especially at its Louisiana electrolyzer facility. Cost overruns. A federal funding waitlist longer than you can imagine. And most importantly, margins are still negative. In Q1, Plug posted a -55% gross margin. Which is actually an improvement from -132% the year before (I didn’t make that up).

As you can imagine, all this chaos pushed Plug into “Are we still a going concern?” territory. And while the answer is yes, people are starting to get excited again. So why are people talking about Plug again? Three words: insider buying spike (ok, there’s more to the story but let’s start there).

CFO Paul Middleton just threw $672,000 of his own money into the stock making it the company’s largest insider buy in nearly 20 years (yes, the company started losing money back in 1997). That’s after he already bought 650,000 shares a few weeks earlier. And Plug made sure we didn’t… issuing a press release like, “Hey everyone, did you see what Paul did?”

On top of that, Plug’s Georgia plant hit a U.S. record with 300 metric tons of hydrogen output in April. Plus, they locked in a massive 2 GW electrolyzer deal in Uzbekistan tied to a $5.5 billion green chemical plant. So… things might be turning? Yes, insider buying is a bullish signal. Yes, there's a short interest of nearly 30%, and whispers of a short squeeze are floating around on reddit boards.

Hate to break it to you, but Plug is still very much down bad… and bleeding cash like it’s going out of style. The company lost over $2 billion last year alone. And while they’re aiming to hit positive gross margins by the end of this year, actual profitability? Don’t hold your breath. That’s not expected until 2028… if everything goes according to plan. (And let’s be honest, Plug’s execution record is... spotty at best.)

To make matters worse, they’re now flirting with a reverse stock split just to stay listed on the Nasdaq… which is never a good sign.

So yeah, it might be a fun little swing trade if you’ve got some play money lying around. But as far as long-term portfolio cornerstones go? Plug’s probably not the horse you want to hitch your retirement wagon to. For now, it’s probably best to keep Plug Power… unplugged.

At the time of publishing this article, Stocks.News holds positions in Amazon and Robinhood as mentioned in the article.