Bionano Genomics urges stockholders to support proposals at special meeting

Bionano Genomics (BNGO) published an open letter to stockholders in support of its proposals at its upcoming special meeting of stockholders, which read in part, “I am writing to highlight the importance of the proposals described in our Definitive Proxy Statement, filed with the SEC on December 5, 2024 for a special meeting of stockholders to be held on January 15, 2025, and to ask that you support them. In particular, I am asking you to vote FOR proposal 2, the reverse stock split proposal. While a reverse stock split is not something Bionano’s Board of Directors or management desire to undertake, we do believe it is necessary because: A reverse stock split would support ongoing compliance with Nasdaq listing requirements. As a listed company on the Nasdaq Capital Market, one of the continued listing requirements for our common stock is a minimum bid price of at least $1.00 per share. Since our stock, which closed at $0.21 yesterday, has traded below $1.00 since the end of May 2024, we are at risk of having our stock delisted. A Nasdaq delisting would likely have a material adverse effect on the value of our company and the value of your stock. While we hope that market sentiment for our stock will be more favorable in the near term, there is no assurance that even a meaningful change would be sufficient to increase our stock price above $1.00 in the time required to maintain our Nasdaq listing. We therefore believe that a reverse split is our best option for maintaining a Nasdaq listing. A reverse stock split would result in potential improvement in the marketability of our common stock. We believe that our current stock price impacts our ability to prudently raise capital, attract and retain talent, and provide us with the flexibility to structure our finances and related transactions. We believe that effecting a reverse stock split may provide a more attractive stock price at which investors would be willing to contribute new capital necessary for the Company to continue operations. Our reverse stock split proposal is a request to support the Company in a way that we believe is essential to achieving our long-term goals.”