The Last Mile for Momentus
A 1-for-50 reverse stock split on Aug. 23 was hardly the "last mile" space tug startup Momentus (NASDAQ: MNTS) envisioned when it went public through a $1.2B SPAC merger with Stable Road Acquisition Corp (NASDAQ: SRAC) in 2020.
But its fate seems to have been written on the hood of an El Camino driven by a Russian entrepreneur accused of having a long-distance relationship with the truth.
“The purpose of the El Camino Real mission was to flight demonstrate our core propulsion technology so customers, investors, and stakeholders can have absolute confidence that Momentus will deliver their payloads to a given orbit,” Momentus CEO Mihkail Kokorich told Space News in 2019. “Some early results have already been shared with our stakeholders, which include customers.”
Mired from the beginning in national security concerns, lawsuits, and SEC fraud charges of overhyping the space readiness of its tech (see above), Momentus hemorrhaged roughly $180M in cash during its first two years of going public. The company struggled to secure customer contracts due to delays and the disappointing debut of its Vigoride-3, which suffered from communications issues and a solar array that failed to deploy. Even after ending this last quarter with just $21.6 of cash and equivalents, Momentus still has a pulse thanks to its original backers. According to SEC filings, the managers of SRC-NI Holdings LLC (the Stable Road Acquisition Corp sponsors) purchased $10M of newly issued stock in February and another $5M this month to delay an otherwise certain death for Momentus.
Now, with just about a month of runaway left, Momentus is hoping to complete a Hail Mary. It threw the ball to the SDA this summer hoping to score a Tranche 2 Transport (Alpha) Layer contract. It is also undoubtedly evaluating a range of long-odds financing and M&A transactions. But absent a big win or financing breakthrough very soon, the El Camino will be lucky to get auctioned off for parts. Anyone in the market for an M-1000 bus, patent-pending water plasma thrusters, or Tape Spring Solar Arrays?
SOURCE: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230908517384/en/Momentus-Regains-Compliance-with-Nasdaq-Minimum-Bid-Price#:~:text=To%20regain%20compliance%20with%20the,listing%20matter%20has%20been%20closed.%20compliance%20with%20the,listing%20matter%20has%20been%20closed