SUNNYVALE, Calif. – After slightly more than two years on the world’s second-largest stock exchange, adult entertainment company FriendFinder Networks Inc. was delisted Thursday. According to a NASDAQ statement, the corporate parent of brands including FriendFinder and Penthouse was unable to maintain the exchange’s required minimum common-stock price of $1 per share or a minimum market value of $15 million for its publicly traded shares.
The stock, formerly traded under the symbol FFN on the NASDAQ Global Market, began trading Thursday morning on the OTCB over-the-counter marketplace under the new ticker symbol FFNT. After opening at 45 cents on Thursday, per-share prices plunged to 37 cents by the close of trading. On Friday, share prices rose 23.6 percent to close at 44.5 cents per share.
The NASDAQ delisting was not unexpected. FriendFinder received an official warning from the NASDAQ in January 2012, only seven months after the company’s initial public offering generated $50 million at $10 per share. Within a week of the IPO, shares lost nearly half their market value and never recovered. Twenty-four hours after FriendFinder released its second quarter earnings statement in mid-August 2011, shares plunged an additional 17.5 percent in a single day, closing at $3.37. By January 2012, the stock was selling for less than $1 per share.
Slightly more than a month after the NASDAQ’s warning, FFN rallied to show a total market value of $72.7 million and a per-common-share price of $2.33. Ultimately, though, the company could not maintain the position for at least 10 consecutive trading days, as NASDAQ regulations require.
NASDAQ notified FriendFinder of the delisting on Aug. 6, 2013.
“The move to [the] OTCQB marketplace does not change the company’s [U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission] reporting obligations under applicable securities laws,” FriendFinder noted in a statement distributed Wednesday. “Accordingly, the company will continue to file” quarterly, annual and current reports as required by U.S. securities laws.
