BNB reserve listed company WINT was delisted, and the "hoarding strategy" was difficult to cure all diseases

Author: Wenser, Odaily Planet Daily

No one expected that the "hoarding strategy" that had always been regarded as a standard by listed companies "failed" for the first time - according to U.S. SEC documents, Windtree Therapeutics (WINT), a US stock BNB treasury company, received a notice on August 19 that its common shares would be delisted from the Nasdaq Capital Market and transferred to the OTC market on August 21 because its stock price had stayed below $1 for too long, and after multiple reverse splits and did not meet the usual grace period.

Affected by this news, WINT's stock price closed down 77.21% and is now trading at $0.11, which has fallen more than 99.98% from its stock price of more than $517 a year ago, compared with its peak price of $567,000 per share at the beginning of its listing in 2020.

It is worth noting that the company announced the establishment of a BNB strategic reserve in July, and its stock price rose to $1.28 at one point, but due to the long-term stock price downturn and the emergence of concept stocks such as "Binance-backed BNB treasury company CEA", it was ultimately difficult to escape the fate of delisting.

This incident also puts a major issue in the industry into the public eye: Is the hoarding strategy effective for all listed companies? Odaily Planet Daily will analyze this in this article.

The first delisted "BNB Strategic Listed Company" appeared, sounding the industry alarm bell of "double repair of coins and stocks"

According

to public information, Windtree Therapeutics Inc. (WINT) is a biotechnology company mainly focused on developing innovative therapies for respiratory diseases, especially drugs for acute lung injury and cardiovascular disease, such as istaroxime and aerosolized KL 4 surfactant。 The company was founded in 1992 and is headquartered in Pennsylvania, USA. According to its official website, the final results of its istaroxime Phase 2B clinical trial have been released, but it is still far from its vision of "addressing a market with significant unmet needs".

As a small biopharmaceutical company, Windtree Therapeutics Inc. has many medical programs in the clinical stage and are far from commercialization. According to the latest data, the company's net income for the most recent quarter was -$10.64 million, a significant increase from -$4.04 million in the previous quarter.

On July 16, the company announced that it had signed a $60 million securities purchase agreement with Build and Build Corp., which may increase to $200 million in the future, and the related funds will be used to purchase BNB as a reserve for the company's treasury to diversify assets and create value。 At that time, Windtree caused market FOMO under the name of "the first Nasdaq-listed company to provide direct investment exposure to BNB tokens", and its stock price soared to $1.86 at one point. On July 25, it once again said it had signed a new financing agreement of $520 million to buy BNB, but the market response was mediocre and the stock price fell to around $1.

Today, a month later, what he is waiting for is a delisting announcement from Nasdaq.

Nasdaq Rules Come into Effect, Windtree Can't Escape Delisting

According

to Nasdaq Listing Rule 5550(a)(2), if the share price of a listed company has been below the minimum bid requirement of $1 for the past 30 consecutive trading days, then Nasdaq has the right to delist the shares of the listed company (i.e., force delisting).

It is worth noting that this is not the first time that Nasdaq has issued an "ultimatum" to the company - at the beginning of this year, Nasdaq granted the company a 180-day extension to restore compliance, but it still failed to meet the corresponding requirements as scheduled, so it could not escape the end of delisting.

The direct reason for Windtree's delisting may come from the failure of the "niche" competition.

One

of the most intuitive reasons for Windtree's delisting is that a better investment target for "BNB Treasury Company" has emerged in the market - CEA Industries (later renamed BNB Network Company, stock code BNC) supported by Binance.

On July 28, CEA Industries and 10 X Capital, a U.S.-listed company, announced a $500 million private placement financing with the support of YZi Labs to build a BNB treasury, and it is reported that the two institutions will expand the scale of PIPE issuance, with more than 140 subscribers participating in the offering, in addition to YZi Labs, there are Pantera Capital, Arche Capital, GSR, Borderless, Arrington Capital, Blockchain.com, Hypersphere Capital, Kenetic and other investment institutions.

In early August, CEA Industries announced that it had completed a $500 million private placement and would change its name to "BNB Network Company", with the ticker symbol changing to "BNC" on August 6, led by YZi Labs, with participation from more than 140 institutions such as Pantera Capital and Blockchain.com. At the same time, the company appointed former Galaxy Digital co-founder David Namdar as CEO and former California Public Employees Pension Fund (CalPERS) chief investment officer Russell Read as chief investment officer.

At this point, the orthodox battle between "BNB Treasury Company" has come to an end in stages, with BNC becoming the winner and WINT becoming an "abandoned child".

It is worth noting that Nano Labs, another U.S.-listed company in the market that focuses on the concept of "BNB Treasury Company", also participated in CEA Industries' previous financing, which spent nearly $5 million to acquire 495,050 shares of Class A common stock, and also included the same number of 495,050 warrants at an exercise price of $15.15 per share. If fully exercised, Nano Labs will hold up to 990,100 shares of the company. As a result, Nano Labs, which has a BNB position of up to 128,000, has become one of the financiers behind BNC and has remained on the table.

At the time of writing, BNC's closing price was temporarily trading at $21.02, up 8.8% in 24 hours, and its market capitalization was temporarily reported at $895 million; Nano Labs (NA) closed at $4.5, up 4.9% in 24 hours, with a market capitalization of $104 million. For comparison, WINT's market capitalization has fallen to around $3.15 million.

It is said that shopping malls are like battlefields, which is particularly direct and cruel in the stock market.

Industry warning: The effectiveness of the currency hoarding strategy also requires a premise, not a "stock price perpetual motion machine"

Judging from the delisting of Windtree, it is obvious that for most listed companies, the currency hoarding strategy is not a "master key" to boost the stock price all the way, such as Strategy, Metaplanet and other US stocks, Nikkei listed companies can achieve the effect of "currency and stock double take-off", there is a prerequisite for effectiveness. In the author's opinion, the following three conditions need to be met:

First, BTC is the preferred choice for coin hoarding. As the "only true god" in the cryptocurrency industry, the value of BTC is relatively stable and more easily accepted by the market and investors, and the hoarding strategy is relatively more intuitive and sustainable for boosting stock prices. After all, the current price of BTC in the early 110,000 yuan per coin still falls short of the target expectations for many traditional institutions and crypto institutions. In the next 5-10 years or even longer, BTC still has an upward expectation of 50% or even more than 100%. For cryptocurrencies, playing is a "market dream rate", and BTC's effectiveness in combating inflation, diversifying risks, and boosting expectations is undoubtedly unique.

The second is the uniqueness of niche competition. After all, for most industries and investment tracks, the phenomenon of people "only knowing the first, not knowing the second" is too common, especially in terms of whether "orthodox institutions" support or not, it is a completely different concept for market users, although in fact, the investment target is not much different, but the impact of market sentiment and long-term judgment is objective. Therefore, if you choose a hoarding target other than BTC, you need to consider the public awareness, acceptability, and direct impact of the corresponding token.

The third is real business support. Unlike various listed companies that have recently been backdoor listed, including Metaplanet, Cangu Group and other listed companies, they are supported by real business, so they are more resistant to other risk factors such as currency price fluctuations and technical security, and are less subject to the jurisdiction of the stock market and even traditional financial market regulators, without considering the risks of delisting too much. To put it simply, listed companies that can make their own hematopoiesis have more confidence to buy coins than listed companies that rely on financing to buy coins.

The delisting of Windtree is just a microcosm of the industry's current development, and the emergence of "listed companies with ETH reserves" such as Bitmine and Sharplink may be the real disruptors of the "over-leveraged game" as Ethereum founder Vitalik said. At that time, we will wait and see whether the "hoarding strategy" will be ineffective for listed companies.

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