Level Brands Fast Track to Delisting?
Level Brands volume today was a dismal 256 shares. The hourly transactions were slower than a lemonade stand in Alaska the middle of the winter. There doesn't seem to be much of a market for this stock, probably because there doesn't seem to be much substance to this stock.
10:00 am-11am: 13 shares and 8 shares. What serious investor buys this few shares unless it's to create a "last transaction" baseline price?
11:30 to 11:35 am - 190 shares. Less than a thousand dollars on a trade. Not promising.
Between Noon and Market Close: 4 shares, 20 shares, 20 more shares.
What possible purpose could there be for these tiny transactions? I would lose more money in the value of my billable hours than it would cost me just for the minutes it took to enter those transactions. Seriously. Four shares? Less than 20.00 worth of stock?
The NYSE requires a minimum number of average trades per day to avoid delisting. Today's trickle of transactions fall at just over 10% of that requirement.
In my opinion, this stock is going to delist shortly after insiders drink the last of the investors' IPO milkshake--through inflated salaries and "brand recognition" fees.
And if that happens...this won't be Marty Sumichrast's first trip to the delisting rodeo. The board of directors should have done more than a perfunctory background corporate history check on Sumichrast, and would have found his success rate as CEO of a public company hovers somewhere on the Success-O-Mometer at just over absolute zero. (More on that later).
But that would assume that the Board was interested in that kind of information. But reading the latest corporate filing from 1/29/2018, makes it appear there are some prior relationships among the board, Sumichrast, and Level Brands, and that most of the Board obtained shares in the company at friends-and-family pricing.
For those more interested in the facts than the Board of Directors seems to be, do a Google search for "Martin Sumichrast Fraud". Sumichrast seems to have gotten solid advice about pushing down bad search engine results, as a simple search of Martin Sumichrast returns pages from multiple domains and self-published content. But get past page one and details emerge about everything from his control of a public company involvement promoted by convicted felon "Wolf of Wall Street" Jordan Belfort, to Sumichrast's role as CEO of a company delisted in 2001 from NASDAQ.
Delisted not because of weak trading. But because NASDAQ took notice of his association with another group of less than savory characters.
Not surprisingly, under the helm of Sumichrast, Level Brands has made some curious business decisions and significant blocks of stock have been transferred to other entities (including his own Stone Street Partners firm) in transactions that seem to benefit related parties far more than the IPO investors and shareholders Sumichrast is supposed to represent.
As always, more to come.
Disclaimer: I still do not hold any investment interest, long or short, in Level Brands or any of their other oddly associated companies.
If you are an IPO investor and would like more info feel free to message me directly here on InvestorsHub.
