When a CEO is willing to walk away from a company, that’s seldom a good sign. Just ask tobacco stock 22nd Century Group (NASDAQ:XXII), whose CEO jumped ship and whose share price promptly dropped over 41% in Monday’s trading session.
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James Mish served as CEO at 22nd Century Group since 2020, which was an interesting time to be a CEO of anywhere, as federal mandates either required your total closure or conversion to online-only operations, except for a handful of “essential” operations. But that’s where Mish came from, and now, he’s out the door. He’ll be keeping a foot in the door, however, as he’ll now be part of 22nd Century Group’s board of directors. Taking over for Mish will be none other than tobacco business unit leader John Miller, who will now be interim CEO.
That’s not the only change at 22nd Century Group, however; it announced a direct offering of common stock valued at $11.7 million, which it will use for several purposes, including stepping up its consumer use data operations, streamlining overall operations, and the ever-popular “general corporate purposes.” It also brought in Andrew Arno to serve as an independent director and launched a cost-reduction initiative that would, hopefully, save $15 million annually.
A look at the last five trading days for 22nd Century Group stock shows that shares are quite volatile but seem to be at their typical level. Five days ago, shares were priced almost identically to what they are today, but that was after a brief run-up that saw shares essentially double what they were. All those gains were promptly lost over most of Friday’s trading and into today.
