Shared micromobility company Helbiz said it will conduct a reverse stock split in an attempt to return to compliance with the Nasdaq, which issued a delisting notice last July because Helbiz shares were trading too low.
Helbiz is also rebranding to Micromobility.com Inc. in order to position itself as a micromobility brand that offers retail, rental, shared micromobility and *check notes* sports streaming services.
The rebranding comes alongside the launch of a new brick-and-mortar retail business, which will include building brick-and-mortar stores across the US, beginning with its first store in SoHo, New York City, in the next 60 days. There is also a ecommerce site available today, with a small selection of e-scooters, e-bikes, helmets and water bottles.
Due to the name change, Micromobility.com’s shares will begin trading under the new symbol MCOM and its warrants under MCOMW from Friday. Helbiz’s share price closed Thursday at $0.12, down 4.5%, and then fell as much as 20% in after-hours trading.
We have many questions and hellbiz Micromobility.com did not respond to TechCrunch’s requests for responses. The biggest questions include: How is the company paying for even a physical store with the scant cash it had in the bank at the end of 2022? When does the company think it will meet the Nasdaq again when it comes to share price? have they addressed the Another Nasdaq Delisting Warning about the lack of an audit committee of at least three independent directors? Do I really have to write Micromobility.com for every future article about this company?
That question about financing a physical store, and even an e-commerce store, is a real one. As a reminder, Helbiz closed the year with $429,000 in cash and cash equivalents. The company’s revenue was $15.5 million on top of a net loss of $82 million.
Ok, Micromobility.com
It is not clear which vehicles Helbiz will sell in its physical stores. From a quick perusal of the new website, Micromobility.com offers as many as three e-scooter models and three e-bike models as a price range. On the scooter side, there’s the HelbizOne, which should be the company’s proprietary e-scooter designed for retail, plus a pair of Okai Neon IIs. However, HelbizOne and Neon II in white are not yet available. They are available for pre-order and are expected to ship in Q4 2023 and April 30, respectively.
Under its selection of electric bikes, Micromobility.com offers two models from Noko, an Italian brand of urban electric bikes priced in the mid-to-expensive range, and the Wheels One (which is more of a sit-down scooter to us). by the websiteWheels One will also be available for long-term subscription rentals for around $130 per month, but as the link to rent now doesn’t lead anywhere, it’s not clear if that service is currently active.
Remember that last November, Helbiz acquired Wheels Labs, a micromobility company that offers unique seated e-scooters for shared use or rental. Helbiz said the purchase would double its annual revenue and help generate profitability. Before, Helbiz acquires Italian scooter-sharing company MiniMoto to capture a slice of the shared moped market. As part of his rebranding, Helbiz said he hopes to position himself as a “micromobility consolidator in view of future M&A transactions.”
The company will continue to offer shared micromobility services across its three brands: Helbiz, Wheels and MiniMoto.
Reverse stock split
“The reverse stock split is primarily for the Company to meet the Nasdaq Capital Market’s minimum offering price requirement and will make the offering price of our common shares more attractive to investors,” said Salvatore Palella, director now executive Micromobility.com. in a sentence.
In July, Helbiz received a delisting warning because the Nasdaq requires listed securities to maintain a minimum offering price of $1 per share, and the company had been below that value for 30 consecutive business days.
The reverse stock split will be implemented with a ratio of 1 to 50 common shares, par value $0.00001, according to the company. This means that the total number of outstanding common shares will be reduced from approximately 278.5 million to approximately 5.6 million, and the total number of outstanding Class B common shares will be reduced from approximately 14 million to 284,518. The changes will take effect when the market opens on Friday, the company said.
Micromobility.com said each shareholder’s percentage ownership interest in the company and proportional voting power will remain largely unchanged, with the exception of minor changes and adjustments from rounding up fractional shares to whole shares.
For what it’s worth, Palella is the company’s largest shareholder, with around 37.2% of controlled voting power, according to a filing with the SEC. In addition, the dual class structure of the company’s common shares concentrates voting power with Palella, which limits an investor’s ability to influence the outcome of major transactions such as a change of control. As a result of the way votes per share are structured, Palella owns about 60% of the voting power of the company’s capital stock and therefore has control over things like the election of directors and any mergers or consolidations. .
