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Comment by syspec

4 years ago

I was wondering, how on earth this company even came to be listed on NASDAQ, since they have no products and no revenue.

So I looked it up and basically it looks like they acquired a company which was ALREADY listed on NASDAQ then renamed it.

> In March 2020, Nikola announced its plans to merge with VectoIQ[10] Acquisition Corporation[11] (ticker VTIQ), a publicly traded special purpose acquisition company run by former General Motors Co. executive Steve Girsky. This resulted in the combined company being listed on the NASDAQ exchange with the NKLA ticker symbol.[12] Nikola’s stock began trading on June 4, 2020, a day after the merger was completed

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Corporation

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syspec

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stu2b50  4 years ago

>So I looked it up and basically it looks like they acquired a company which was ALREADY listed on NASDAQ then renamed it

Not just any company, a Spac. Special purpose acquisition company. That's their purpose, they're not actually companies, but blank check investment vehicles.

It's a way to go public without an IPO. And unlike reverse mergers with actual companies spacs are clean since they're shell companies.

They're neither shady nor unusual, though.

  • glangdale  4 years ago

    Reverse Takeovers (RTOs) are super-common in Australia. A lot of broken mining companies whose exploration came up blank wind up sitting around still with a symbol on the ASX. This is used as an easy way to list - although the prognosis is not normally good (i.e. anyone evading the scrutiny of a listing starts a bit behind the 8-ball). Given how expensive and complex listing is, it's not the worst thing in the world.