After shares of Aéropostale slid Thursday on bankruptcy fears, the company was delisted by the New York Stock Exchange early Friday.
That came after news that the retailer could file for bankruptcy as early as this month. Trading of the stock was froze not long after.
The beleaguered teen retailer reported that it had failed to meet the NYSE’s requirements to stay listed and would begin trading on the OTCQX Best Markets—an over-the-counter market—under the symbol AROP. That could make it harder for the company to raise capital. Aéropostale’s shares have slipped from an all-time high of $29.90 in 2010, to 15 cents when the stock stopped trading Thursday.
Aéropostale said it has no intention of appealing the delisting decision, which does not affect its stock price—excluding its effect on investor sentiment.
The company first received a delisting notification from the NYSE in November, when the Big Board said the retailer’s average market cap had fallen bellow $50 million in a 30-day period. The NYSE delists stocks that have fallen near or to the penny-stock category, since even small movements of those stocks can trigger bouts of volatility.
Aéropostale shares closed with a market cap of $12.15 million Thursday—a 99.6% nose dive since the company’s peak market cap of $3 billion in 2010.
The stock first slid below a dollar late August, and has continued dropping ever since as Aéropostale reported its third consecutive year of falling sales during its fourth-quarter earnings report last month.