MariaDB sent dollar dip warning from NYSE

The New York Stock Exchange has notified MariaDB, the database services biz formed around a fork of MySQL, that it is not in compliance with its listing manual after the company's share price dipped below $1 over a 30-day period.

While the move has no immediate impact on the company's listing, it underlines the financial challenges facing MariaDB since its stock was placed on the financial market in December 2022.

In a Securities and Exchange Commission filing, MariaDB said it would notify the NYSE of its intent to regain compliance with the applicable continued listing standards.

"The company can regain compliance at any time within a six-month cure period following its receipt of the NYSE notice if, on the last trading day of any calendar month during the cure period, MariaDB's ordinary shares had a closing share price of at least $1.00 and an average closing share price of at least $1.00 over the 30 trading-day period ending on the last trading day of the applicable calendar month," the statement said [PDF].

The Register has asked MariaDB for further comment.

MariaDB launched on the NYSE via a special purpose acquisition vehicle (SPAC), a combination of MariaDB and Cayman Islands-based Angel Pond Holdings Corp (APHC). Its shares were trading at $11.26 on December 16, giving it a $373.71 million market capitalization.

Shortly after the flotation, CEO Michael Howard told The Register the SPAC vehicle was chosen because of a combination of experience with financial services and the Asian market.

"For IPO in and of itself, it gave us an efficient and knowledgeable means to go public. Without having these people surrounding you, you're kind of a babe in the woods," Howard said at the time.

• MariaDB CEO: People who want things free also want to have very nice vacations
• MariaDB's Xpand offers PostgreSQL compatibility without the forking drama
• MariaDB cuts jobs, repeats 'going concern' warning to stock market
• From Sun to the cloud: MariaDB carves out space in database market

The company's share price dipped below a dollar in mid-May and has only briefly risen above the crucial marker since.

In April, the company made a small number of job cuts and repeated its "going concern" warning to the stock market. As of March, it was seeking additional capital to meet its projected working capital, operating, and debt repayment needs for periods after the end of September.

To be fair, a going concern notice in regulatory filings is far from unusual. Between 10 and 20 percent of companies may have issued one recently, according to research.

In May, the company told investors it was "in advanced discussions with a large commercial bank about a loan facility that includes both a term loan and a revolving credit facility."

The result of these talks has yet to emerge.

The share price has been reluctant to budge despite the company making a raft of well-received technology announcements. In May, it announced a PostgreSQL-compatible front end in its SkySQL Database-as-a-Service, which provides a globally distributed RDBMS on the back end. MariaDB can also function as a backend for MongoDB clients. ®