- BuzzFeed could get kicked off the Nasdaq because its stock price is so low.
- The digital media company has until November 27 to raise its price or face delisting.
- BuzzFeed has struggled as a public company and is now trying to pivot to AI and creators.
BuzzFeed, once the darling of digital media, is now at risk of getting kicked off the Nasdaq because its stock is doing so badly.
Per a Friday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, BuzzFeed got a notice from Nasdaq on May 31 that its stock had been trading below the minimum threshold of $1 for the previous 30 business days. The Hollywood Reporter’s J. Clara Chan first reported the delisting notice.
BuzzFeed has until November 27 to raise its stock price or it could get booted off the exchange. (It could also apply for an 180-day extension.)
The digital media outlet went public via a SPAC in 2021 but has struggled as a public company, seeing its market cap dwindle to under $100 million. The firm has had an especially rough last few months.
In April, BuzzFeed shut down its award-winning news arm, BuzzFeed News, and lay off 15% of the company’s staff, or 180 people.
“We’ve faced more challenges than I can count in the past few years: a pandemic, a fading SPAC market that yielded less capital, a tech recession, a tough economy, a declining stock market, a decelerating digital advertising market and ongoing audience and platform shifts,” CEO Jonah Peretti wrote in a note to staff at the time. “Dealing with all of these obstacles at once is part of why we’ve needed to make the difficult decisions to eliminate more jobs and reduce spending.”
BuzzFeed is trying to bounce back from the brink
To get its momentum back, BuzzFeed has doubled down on its AI and creator efforts in recent weeks.
In particular, BuzzFeed has leaned into publishing quizzes powered by artificial intelligence, and there’s some indication these articles have been successful so far. BuzzFeed said in May that its readers spent 40% more time with AI-generated quizzes than traditional ones.
But it’s been a brutal time for digital media companies, especially those that came of age in the era of the Facebook firehose of traffic. Vice, the onetime king of valuations at over $5 billion, declared bankruptcy last month. And its clear that BuzzFeed has declined in cultural prominence since “The Dress” broke the internet in 2015, perhaps the high watermark of the company’s influence.
All is not lost, however. Though BuzzFeed’s revenue declined year-over-year, it still made $67.2 million in the first quarter.
Still, the big question for BuzzFeed remains: Can Peretti, the magician of online virality, pull another rabbit out of the hat in the era of AI?
With the stock price in the dumps, it seems that public investors aren’t betting on it.