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UPDATE: Medialink stock reaches record low
By Tonya Garcia
NEW YORK: Medialink's stock price dropped to under one dollar last week, reaching its lowest price in company history.
At one point Wednesday morning, May 28, the broadcast and multimedia PR firm's stock price was listed at $1, but yesterday, May 27, the official close price was 89 cents; its lowest close in history. It closed Friday at $1.07. NASDAQ rules require companies to maintain a minimum closing bid of $1 per share. Failure to do so for 30 consecutive business days runs the risk of delisting. A one-year chart of the company's stock shows a gradual and persistent fall; the 52-week high for Medialink stock is $6.50, the low, reached during Thursday, was 87 cents.
COO Larry Thomas said those speculating about the well-being of the company were "connecting the dots in a way they shouldn't be connected," pointing out that the company has added five sales people in the past 90 days and is looking to fill other positions.
In its Q1 report released last week, the company reported a $2.5 million loss.
PRWeek reported the May 16 departures of Mary Buhay, former SVP of corporate communications, and Michelle Wallace, former SVP of client services. Thomas said the company is not looking for replacements for them but is "continuing to structure the business in a way that makes sense for the current market."
"It's part of the changes in the overall media landscape [and] changes in the broadcast PR industry," said Thomas. "The way to improve confidence overall is to make sure we have services that are relevant, [which is] what we're doing now."
When the Q1 results, released May 15, showed an 11.1% drop in revenues from the same period last year for a total of $7.1 million, Medialink CEO Laurence Moskowitz said in a statement that the company is suffering from the overall economic downturn. He noted a "sharp decline in business in March," but said that "April's results were back in line with our expectations," and the company had begun a "realignment of our domestic media communications group" to improve sales and services.
Medialink CFO Kenneth Torosian also attributed Q1 losses to problems with investor, Pequot Capital. "According to their public filings, Pequot held approximately 14% of the Medialink common stock," Torosian wrote in an e-mail. "The sale of over 900,000 shares of the Medialink stock, a generally thinly-traded security, in a short period of time put price pressure on the stock."
Medialink's Teletrax digital video tracking service reported a revenue of $1.1 million, an almost 60% increase from the year-ago period, but it incurred an operating loss of $825,000.
"We also are continuing the re-evaluation of the overall business plan for Teletrax while we explore various means of tracking video on the Internet," Moskowitz said in the earnings statement.
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