MICT investigates suspected market market manipulation

MICT announced it has appointed special legal counsel, Warshaw Burstein The Christian Levine Law Group and Greenberg Taurig LLP, together with an extensive team of expert advisors, to investigate the suspected market manipulation and naked short selling of the Company’s stock and take appropriate action in the event there has been any such unlawful activity. Given the Company’s level of consolidated group profitability following the acquisition of Tingo Mobile Limited, the Board is concerned that the Company’s share price and market capitalization, currently standing at approximately $175 million, is being artificially depressed through various market manipulation tactics. Additionally, the Board has recently become concerned that potential market manipulation tactics were deployed to artificially depress the Company’s share price and cause a breach of compliance with the $1.00 minimum bid price requirement under Nasdaq Listing Rule 5550(a)(2) for continued listing on The Nasdaq Capital Market. Furthermore, pursuant to the Board’s recent discussions with its advisors, it now believes that the suspected market manipulation and depression of the share price may have disadvantaged and harmed the Company in relation to at least one corporate transaction. In addition to the market manipulation investigations, the Board has authorized the following actions that are designed to achieve three objectives: namely to maximize and protect shareholder value for those holders of authentic shares; expose those parties that may have sold synthetic shares or elicited naked short sales; and make it more difficult to perpetrate market manipulation in the future: A ‘warrant and share buyback program’, as initially disclosed in the Company’s press release of November 29, 2022, and as initiated on February 3, 2023, with the repurchase of warrants that represented 28,117,835 shares of MICT common stock. A potential special dividend plan, various options for which are currently being considered for deployment during the year. A possible dual listing of the Company’s common stock on one or more additional exchanges, in parallel to the Company’s present primary listing on Nasdaq. Darren Mercer, Chief Executive Officer of MICT, commented: "As stated in previous recent announcements, the Board has ongoing concerns about the significant disconnect between our share price and the group’s strong financial position and profitability since the acquisition of Tingo Mobile. Having completed extensive due diligence on Tingo Mobile, through several leading globally recognized professional advisors, and subsequently appointing Deloitte as our group auditor, there seems no logical reason as to why the Company’s performance and other attributes are not reflected in the share price. In particular it makes no sense that our market capitalization, which currently stands at around $175 million, is at a significant discount to the combined cash balance of MICT and Tingo Mobile at September 30, 2022 of $314 million. "