Chinese autonomous trucking company TuSimple will delisted from the Nasdaq stock exchange as it moves forward with its plan to completely exit the US market.
The company announced Wednesday that it will file what’s known as a Form 25 on (or around) January 29 to delist its stock and expects the shares to trade until around February 7.
TuSimple says it is choosing to go public for a few reasons. A special committee of independent directors said the company’s “valuation and liquidity have declined” while its share price volatility “has increased significantly” and that “the benefits of remaining a listed company no longer justify the costs.” . The company went public in 2021 at a valuation of more than $8 billion, but is now worth closer to $70 million. Its shares are worth about 30 cents after trading as high as $62.58.
The committee also said that “[s]Since TuSimple’s initial public offering in 2021, there has been a significant shift in the capital markets, in part due to rising interest rates and quantitative tightening, which has changed investor sentiment about pre-commercialization technology companies” — a statement that is equally true. it is dry.
These are all reasonable, unsurprising explanations, though they understate what has happened to the company over the past two years. Before it goes public in 2021, the Commission on Foreign Investment in the United States scrutinized TuSimple and its Chinese shareholders. The startup is being investigated by the FBI and the Securities and Exchange Commission, in part because of co-founder Mo Chen’s tie up with another Chinese trucking startup, Hydron. The board then ousted TuSimple co-founder Xiaodi Hou in late 2022 while the startup was under investigation.
Since then, the company has continued to struggle. It has slashed the number of employees and neglected its strategy and narrowly avoided a forced delisting last May. The company finally decided late last year to exit the US market entirely and focus on China. Some of its US trucks are now up for auction, along with a bunch of other equipment, like the lidar sensors it bought from Hesai and Aeva.
This story has been updated to reflect that the board fired Xiaodi Hou.
