The Industry Standard - Borders bookstore gets delisted by NYSE? - Comments

Just to add further

David Kuan — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 13:31:38 -0400

Just to add further clarification (to the judgment verbiage), the minimum capitalization requirements is also suspended until June 30, 2009. Since BOTH restrictions (see comment #1) are suspended, BGP is safe from delisting by June 30, 2009.

Judgment can be rendered on

David Kuan — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 12:01:12 -0400

Judgment can be rendered on this one. Delisting restrictions have been suspended until June 30, 2009 which coincides with the prediction close date.

NYSE temporarily lowered the

David Kuan — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 16:11:02 -0500

NYSE temporarily lowered the minimum capitalization threshold from $25M to $15M until April 22. This makes criteria #2 much harder to hit. Furthermore, NYSE is in talks with SEC to relax the $1/sh restrictions as well.

This prediction has now taken a turn to become less likely to happen by the judgment date.

Correct. Scenario 2 would

Yi-Wyn Yen167771 — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 17:18:09 -0500

Correct. Scenario 2 would also contribute to Borders being removed from the NYSE. BGP has a $33M market cap currently.

@Yi-Wyn, just to be clear

David Kuan — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 16:21:09 -0500

@Yi-Wyn, just to be clear there are 2 scenarios for BGP to be delisted from NYSE

1. If BGP does not raise its avg price per share above $1 by June 30, 2009 (six months cure period provided)
2. If BGP market capitalization drops below $25M (approx $0.41/sh) over a 30 trading days (with no cure period)

Scenario 1 can be easily circumvented through the reverse split process. However, a reverse split puts BGP at a greater risk of failing minmium market capitalization requirement (i.e. a 1 for 5 reverse split would put the price per share at approx $2.50, a drop below $2.00/sh would set market cap below $25M).

Borders bookstore gets delisted by NYSE?

Yi-Wyn Yen — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 14:38:21 -0500

Judgment made on March 25, 2009: The New York Stock Exchange has suspended the $1 listing rule till June 30, '09, which means Borders will not be delisted in this time frame. Borders is also considering a reverse stock split to stay above the $1 mark. This prediction did not come, which the community judged correctly. -- The Standard

Borders is in danger of getting kicked off the New York Stock Exchange. The publicly-traded book company received a letter on Dec. 31, 2008 that said if Borders cannot get its stock price above $1 in six months, the company will be delisted.

The bookseller has been losing market share to online retailers like Amazon and struggling as consumers cut back on discretionary spending. Borders replaced its CEO and CFO in early Jan. 2009 in hopes of turning around the company.

Borders's shares have fallen below $1 since Dec. 1, 2008.

Prediction: Borders gets removed from trading on the NYSE. Borders must comply with the NYSE's standards to bring the average closing share price above $1 by June 30, 2009 or else get delisted.

Image: Brewbooks/Flickr