TheMaven, the embattled publisher of TheStreet.com and Sports Illustrated, among hundreds of other outlets, is aiming for a reverse stock split that’ll boost its share price. One roadblock, though, is that the company hasn’t filed financial-disclosure documents in nearly three years, the New York Post reported on Tuesday night.
As of early Wednesday, TheMaven’s stock was trading at 69 cents per share; the Seattle-based company has spent nearly all of 2020 trading at less than $1 per share, although it briefly hit the threshold in mid-September.
“We anticipate filing the [financial] statements for 2018 and 2019 in the next month,” TheMaven CEO Ross Levinsohn told the Post. Levinsohn also said that the financial documents for the first three quarters of 2020 — which would shine a light on how the company has performed during the pandemic — likely won’t be included.
The news comes a few days after two of the company’s largest investors — B. Riley Financial, Inc. and 180 Degree Capital Corp. — said they were pushing to remove five of Maven’s directors: John Fichthorn, Rinku Sen, Peter Mills, David Bailey and Josh Jacobs. The board, according to an SEC filing on Tuesday, has “overseen dismal financial performance and other materially negative impacts” — making a revamp necessary, according to B. Riley and 180.
The filing added: “We are soliciting your consent in favor of the adoption of the Removal Proposal because we believe that it is time for the Company to pursue a new direction and that a new direction needs to start from the top with a new Board that better reflects the Company’s current strategy and stockholder base. We also believe that at this stage of the Company’s evolution and in anticipation of an uplist to a major stock exchange, the composition of the Company’s Board should look much different than it does today, particularly regarding experience serving on public company boards.”
Earlier this week, B. Riley and 180 pointed to a “new business model” led by Levinsohn, who was appointed chief executive of TheMaven in August, following the resignation of founder James Heckman. TheMaven recently raised $24 million in an effort to drive growth and cutdown on debt; Levinsohn told the Post the funding was “another validation of our business model, strategy, and leadership team.”
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