Dive Brief:
- Titan Medical’s shares will be delisted from the Nasdaq stock market, the company announced on Thursday.
- The delisting comes as Titan’s shares have remained below $1 for much of the last 12 months. After a Feb. 16 hearing, a Nasdaq panel made the decision to delist the company.
- Toronto-based Titan Medical has been developing a surgical robot that uses a single access point, starting with gynecological procedures, but it has faced delays to its planned submission to the Food and Drug Administration, including shortages of key components and recruitment of software engineers.
Dive Insight:
Titan Medical’s shares started trading below $1 in late 2021, when the company said that additional time and work would be needed prior to an investigational device exemption (IDE) submission with the FDA. An IDE, if granted, would allow Titan’s Enos surgical robot to be used in a clinical study. Shortly afterward, its former CEO stepped down from the company.
In December 2021, Nasdaq sent the company a deficiency notice, for the company’s failure to meet the minimum bid price requirement.
Titan started cutting costs and began a strategic review process. But with no parties interested in acquiring the business, Titan has since focused on selling its assets, including its patents.
In February, the firm announced a layoff of 48 employees at its Chapel Hill, North Carolina, operations, leaving just 18 employees to focus on a potential strategic transaction and administrative work. Titan halted development of its Enos robot, including work on the IDE filing.
Titan has the option to appeal the delisting, but has not yet decided whether to do so. Any appeal would not prevent the suspension of trading on Friday, the company said in a statement.
Titan will continue to trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange, and it expects it could trade its shares on the over-the-counter market under the ticker “TMDIF.”
Shares in Titan have fallen from a peak of $72 in 2014 to just 14 cents, dropping 20% in morning trading on Thursday.
