After receiving a delisting notice from Nasdaq in March, it appears the company investors knew as "LGBT" is no longer. PlanetOut, now owned by Regent Media, had 15 days from receiving the notice to prove to the stock exchange it had a plan in place to bring total company equity above $10 million — a requirement to trade on Nasdaq. In a March 13 press release, PlanetOut said it "currently intends to submit an application to transfer its securities to The Nasdaq Capital Market."
Evidently, that came and went: The stock has effectively flat-lined, as seen above.
An alert reader notified us yesterday that "PlanetOut Inc. just stopped trading today…gone." Indeed, LGBT is no longer being traded; the company's market cap was just $1.55 million with shares priced at $0.380. In December 2004, LGBT traded at $136.
PlanetOut now operates under the auspices of Here Media, a name change engineered when PlanetOut's media assets (Out, The Advocate) merged with Paul Colichman's Here TV and Regent Entertainment Media.
When PlanetOut joined the Nasdaq after its 2000 founding, it was heralded as a particularly special moment in gay history: The first all-queer company to trade on a stock exchange. The dream was realized, then extinguished.
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If their website is any reflection of their NASDAQ standing then I can see why they were downgraded. I've been underwhelmed by Planet Out's reporting style and content almost since it went public in 2000 and rarely even bother to go there anymore. Of course that may be a generational thing on my part but with just a little search effort, I've found many other gay sites that are infintely better. Queerty being a good example.
@OldFAQ: Have to agree. This site, Joemygod, the Edge city sites, Advocate all do a much better job.
sad sad sad
A few housekeeping notes. PlanetOut was listed on the NASDAQ after going public in 2005, not in 2000. The delisting was a move on Regent's part following the close of the sale of PlanetOut. The real news here is that Regent has now acquired PlanetOUt as of last Friday. They made no announcement and rumor is that they are laying low and plan a lot of tactical and controversial structural moves in the coming months, all best kept on the down low.
Wait, this was a shock because…?
I think it's sad what previous management of this company did. Utterly ridiculous and they should be jailed for raping the company as they did.
However, from what I've heard they have cleaned house and gotten rid of all the idiots and are poised to bring it all back to life better than ever. I've been watching Planetout.com especially and found it odd they re-launched it a few months ago and didn't say a word. It's actually looking really good.
I hope they do well as some of these publications and URLs are iconic to our community. Don't write them off yet.