SAN FRANCISCO, April 3 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- VIA Pharmaceuticals, Inc. , a biotechnology company focused on the development of compounds for the treatment of cardiovascular and metabolic disease, today announced that it has received a letter, dated March 31, 2009, from the staff of the NASDAQ Stock Market informing the Company that it does not currently comply with NASDAQ Marketplace Rule 4310(c)(3). NASDAQ Marketplace Rule 4310(c)(3) requires companies maintain either: (i) $2,500,000 in stockholders’ equity; (ii) a market value of listed securities of $35,000,000; or (iii) net income from continuing operations of $500,000 in the most recently completed fiscal year or two of the last three most recently completed fiscal years. The Company intends to submit a specific plan to achieve and sustain compliance with the $2,500,000 stockholders’ equity standard by April 15, 2009, including the time frame for completion of the compliance plan. If the NASDAQ staff determines that the Company’s plan does not adequately address the issue noted above, the NASDAQ staff will provide written notice that the Company’s securities will be delisted. At that time, the Company may appeal the NASDAQ staff’s determination to a NASDAQ Listing Qualifications Panel (the “Panel”), which would stay any further delisting action by NASDAQ pending a final decision by the Panel. No assurances can be provided that NASDAQ will grant the Company sufficient time to execute its plan to insure that it will maintain its NASDAQ listing.
About VIA Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
VIA Pharmaceuticals, Inc. is a biotechnology company focused on the development of compounds for the treatment of cardiovascular and metabolic disease. VIA’s lead candidate, VIA-2291, targets a significant unmet medical need: reducing inflammation in the blood vessel wall, which is an underlying cause of atherosclerosis and its complications, including heart attack and stroke. In addition, VIA’s pipeline of drug candidates includes other compounds to address other underlying causes of cardiovascular disease: high cholesterol, diabetes and inflammation. For more information, visit: http://www.viapharmaceuticals.com.
Forward Looking Statements
This press release may contain “forward-looking” statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements relate to future events or to VIA’s future financial performance and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause VIA’s actual results, levels of activity, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, levels of activity, performance or achievements expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by the use of words such as “may,” “could,” “expect,” “intend,” “plan,” “seek,” “anticipate,” “believe,” “estimate,” “predict,” “potential,” “continue” or the negative of these terms or other comparable terminology. You should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements since they involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which are, in some cases, beyond VIA’s control and which could materially affect actual results, levels of activity, performance or achievements.
The plan that the Company intends to submit to NASDAQ may not be acceptable to NASDAQ or may not be able to be implemented within a time frame acceptable to NASDAQ due to a number of factors, including, but not limited to:
All forward-looking statements attributable to us or persons acting on our behalf are expressly qualified in their entirety by the cautionary statements set forth above. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date they are made, and VIA undertakes no obligation to update publicly any of these statements in light of new information or future events.
CONTACT: James G. Stewart, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial
Officer of VIA Pharmaceuticals, Inc., +1-415-283-2204
Web site: http://www.viapharmaceuticals.com/
