The parent company of BGE is reeling today after a huge sell-off on Wall Street yesterday.

Shares of Constellation Energy Group nose-dived down 16%. As The Sun reports, that’s the biggest one-day drop in the past seven years. Why should you care?

I’ve spent a good part of the morning going through their quarterly report, which is an account of their finances over the past three months. The reason for this huge drop? They screwed up the books. Where do they make this admission? On page 46.

Here’s the reason for the huge drop. Basically, the company is in financial trouble, which means their credit rating is suffering. That means they’re having trouble getting good loans. (Should have gone to FreeCreditReport.com.)

In addition, they have some contracts that require they maintain a good credit rating. Because of their negative rating they lost some of the money from those contracts. That meant they had to put up more collateral, cutting their earnings significantly.

Ok, now for that “why should I care?” part. Constellation’s bond rating — the evaluation of how the company is doing financially — could be downgraded to “junk” status, as Forbes reports. That would be absolutely disastrous.

Let’s be clear. The company is not in any need of a bailout, yet. But this is front page news. The company is in serious financial trouble. There’s just no sugar coating it.

Should you worry about your electricity and gas supply? Not quite yet. But, it is definitely something to keep an eye on.

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