Icelandic biotech regains stock listing - June 30, 2009
deCODE Genetics, a biotechnology company based in Reykjavik, Iceland, has been relisted on the NASDAQ Global Market stock exchange, the company announced last Friday.
deCODE is famous for its aggressive pursuit of DNA sequence variations linked to human disease, and aims to use this information to develop diagnostic tools and uncover new drug targets. Last October, its steadily declining stock price combined with a crashing market to drive the company's market capitalization (a measure of a company's worth, based on share price) below the $50 million minimum required to be listed on the NASDAQ Global Market stock exchange. (See 'Icelandic biotech feels the pinch', subscription required.) At that time, CEO Kari Stefansson said management was restructuring the company. The stakes were high -- in November, one analyst told Nature (subscription required) that if deCODE didn't find a way to boost their financial position, the company had little chance of surviving to see 2009.
But the company has lived on (and continued to crank out high profile genome-wide association studies). The decision to relist deCODE reverses a February decision to bump the company to the NASDAQ Capital Market, which generally lists companies with smaller market capitalization. deCODE hasn't released information about what might have spurred the change of heart -- the company's market capitalization still hovers around $37 million, and that's including the ~33% bump in stock price following last week's announcement.
