The $100 million company that owns a New Jersey deli was delisted from an over-the-counter market platform because of public disclosure “irregularities,” according to the firm that booted that the mysterious delicatessen operator.
OTC Markets Group executives also told CNBC on Thursday that they are now examining the filings of a second firm — E-Waste — a shell company that has multiple ties to deli owner Hometown International.
Like Hometown International, E-Waste has an incredibly high market capitalization despite having little if any significant business operations.
Hometown International’s market capitalization has topped $100 million despite owning only a Paulsboro, New Jersey, deli, which had sales of less than $37,000 combined in the past two years.
Hometown International, which trades under the symbol HWIN, had a “buyer beware” label slapped on it Wednesday night when OTC Markets Group relegated it to Pink, a less prestigious over-the-counter platform.
OTC Markets CEO Cromwell Coulson said in a tweet Wednesday that Hometown International’s demotion and warning label were due to “public interest concerns” – and for “not complying with the rules.”
OTC Markets officials on Thursday would not say whether they have contacted the Securities and Exchange Commission, which regulates publicly traded companies, about their concerns with Hometown International.
But OTC Markets general counsel Dan Zinn noted that every suspension or action the firm takes against one of the 11,000 companies that trade on its over-the-counter market platforms is “all publicly available, so the SEC and FINRA [the regulator of broker-dealers] has access to all of these.”
“Frequently, we have a lot of back-and-forth with the SEC,” Zinn said in an interview. “We do it a lot, and we do it typically behind the scenes.”
The SEC did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CNBC.
Hometown International officials did not return requests for comment.
Article source: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/22/hometown-international-stock-100m-nj-deli-delisted-disclosure-irregularities.html