AquaBounty no longer facing de-listing from Nasdaq

The Nasdaq stock market has withdrawn a threat to de-list land-based salmon farmer AquaBounty Technologies, the company said in a filing to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission today.

AquaBounty, which produces salmon with an inherited genetic modification which makes them grow from hatch to harvest in 18 months, said: “As previously reported, on October 31, 2022, AquaBounty Technologies, Inc. (the “Company”) received a notification letter from the Listing Qualifications Department of The Nasdaq Stock Market LLC (“Nasdaq”), notifying the Company that because the closing bid price for its common stock, par value $0.001 per share, had been below $1.00 per share for 30 consecutive business days, it no longer complied with the minimum bid price requirement for continued listing on the Nasdaq Capital Market. Nasdaq Listing Rule 5550(a)(2) requires listed securities to maintain a minimum bid price of $1.00 per share.

“On October 30, 2023, the Company received a letter from the Listing Qualifications Department of the Nasdaq, informing the Company that it had regained compliance with the minimum bid price requirement under Nasdaq Listing Rule 5550(a)(2) and that the matter is now closed.”

Reverse stock split

Last month, AquaBounty carried out a 1-for-20 reverse stock split automatically converted 20 existing shares of the company’s common stock into one new share of common stock. The number of outstanding shares of common stock was reduced from approximately 71.36 million to approximately 3.57 million.

The company’s share price earlier today was US $2.27.

AquaBounty grows its fish in a 1,200-tonne-capacity recirculating aquaculture system (RAS) facility in Albany, Indiana, and is building a 10,000-tonne-plus facility in Pioneer, Ohio. Work on the Ohio facility has paused while the company works out the best way to tackle rising capital costs for the project.

The company also has a broodstock and egg production facility on Prince Edward Island, Canada.

Consistent losses

AquaBounty consistently records losses and won’t be in a position to make a profit until it has scaled up production. The Pioneer facility is the first of five that the company intends to build in North America.

The company made product revenue of €788,000 from April to June, a decrease of 26% compared to the $1.1m made in Q2 2022. Net loss in the second quarter of 2023 was $6.5m, up from $5.5m in Q2 2022.

“Our second quarter results were impacted by a significant decline in market prices for Atlantic salmon, despite the fact that our Indiana farm had its highest quarterly output to date,” said AquaBounty chief executive Sylvia Wulf in a press release accompanying the Q2 results in August. “The demand for our fish continues to exceed our supply and we continue to identify opportunities to increase our production to meet this demand.”

Wulf added that AquaBounty continued to explore new business development opportunities “which leverage our core strengths, and which could be applied to new species, including conventional salmon and other finfish, and new geographical territories worldwide”.