Critical Path, once a high-flying dot-com and the dominant leader as a provider of hosted messaging services for businesses, died trying to find a niche.
In February 2001, CEO Douglas Hicky stepped down, a week after the company said it may have misstated its 4th quarter results, which were already markedly below Wall Street expectations. Numerous class action lawsuits were filed amidst allegations that Critical Path misled investors by not preparing its financial statements in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles.
At its peak, the company's stock traded at $150 a share. Share prices collapsed amidst a company accounting scandal in 2002, and Critical Path was forced to significantly cut costs, which judging by 2002 year-end earnings, have been of little help.
The certificate features the signature of former President & CEO Douglas Hickey.
This cancelled stock certificate has no transferable value as a legal security, but represents a truly rare opportunity to own a piece of American history. The never-folded certificate is in mint condition and individually numbered.
Delisted from Nasdaq National Market
CHICAGO, previously trading on The Nasdaq National Market, has, pursuant to the decision of The Nasdaq Listing Qualification Panel, has been delisted from The Nasdaq National Market.
The Nasdaq notified the Company it had failed to maintain a market value of public float of at least $5,000,000 and a bid price of at least $1.00 per share for 30 consecutive trading days. Nasdaq implemented a moratorium on the minimum bid price and market value of public float requirements for continued listing on The Nasdaq Stock Market and the Panel determined that the Company had failed to provide a definitive plan to achieve, and therefore sustain, compliance with the net tangible assets and/or stockholders' equity requirements for continued listing on The Nasdaq National Market.
The Dot.com Disaster..!!
Documents from short-lived Web companies are a contemporary commodity. With the introduction of the Internet, hundreds of start-up companies sold shares of their stock and millions of investors purchased these shares. But in the blink of an eye, many of these dot com companies went out of business. Importantly, most of the dot com shares were traded electronically and, thus, very few hard copy paper stock certificates were issued. Collectors of the limited number of issued certificate shares will have a rich return on their investment.
Additionally, a growing number of investors and collectors have expressed interest in obtaining the defunct shares as reminders of the roaring, heady days of the Internet bubble - and the mistakes made when it burst.
Therefore, these dot com certificates are in very limited in supply and have become a collector's dream. We invite you to experience a piece of Internet history. Its significance will most certainly continue to increase as the current generation X-ers come to realize the value of this part of history.
