An overwhelming “yes” vote at the annual shareholders meeting of Spanish Broadcasting System means that the company’s directors can now institute a reverse stock split to keep its stock from being delisted by Nasdaq.
A Nasdaq Hearings Panel has not yet taken any action after a hearing last month in which SBS presented its plan to regain compliance with the $1 minimum bid price. That plan was implementation of the proposed reverse split, which would raise the price per share by greatly reducing the number of shares.
More than 250.7 million shares were voted in favor of the reverse split authorization at the annual meeting June 1st. Just under 10 million “no” votes were cast, with 390K abstentions.
The SBS board now has authority to order a reverse split of not less than one share for each five now owned and not more than one-for-ten.
All SBS directors were also re-elected, although it was hardly a vote of confidence for CEO Raul Alarcon. Assuming he voted his 234 million votes (10 each for his Class B stock) in favor of his own re-election, the nearly 11.9 million votes cast against him and CFO Joe Garcia by Class A shareholders far outnumbered the two million or so cast for them.
RBR-TVBR observation: This looks like the only way out for SBS. The stock price is no longer within striking distance of the buck target and has been falling in recent days. It closed Wednesday (6/8) at 64 cents.
