Trū Shrimp postpones IPO citing "adverse market conditions"

The Trū Shrimp Companies is postponing its initial public offering, announced earlier this month, due to “adverse market conditions,” it said in a press release.

Balaton, Minnesota, U.S.A.-based Trū Shrimp originally announced the IPO on 2 February.

At the time, the aquaculture company said it was offering 1.5 million shares of common stock at a price range of between USD 9.00 (EUR 7.87) and USD 11.00 (EUR 9.61). It also said it expected to grant the underwriters of the IPO a 45-day option to purchase an additional 225,000 shares of its common stock at the IPO price.

"We've been at this now over six years, and we firmly believe the research is done and we're ready to commercialize," Trū Shrimp CEO Michael Ziebell told the Minneapolis Star Tribune. "We have customers for our products. This is the next step going forward.”

However, the company shuttered operations during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, furloughing employees from May 2020 through July 2021, according to the Star Tribune. Ziebell said the pandemic made it difficult to raise capital as "people were not able to come to Balaton to visit and see our technology."

Trū Shrimp told SeafoodSource it is "not in a position to provide any additional updates outside of what we included in our press release this morning."

Trū Shrimp was created as a division of agriculture firm Ralco Nutrition in 2014 but was spun off in 2017. In 2018, it announced plans to build a USD 50 million (EUR 44 million) 67-acre commercial shrimp farm and hatchery in Luverne, Minnesota, but it changed course in 2019 and instead said it would construct its first production facility in Madison, South Dakota.

The company has yet to break ground on the facility because it has not yet raised the USD 90 million (EUR 79 million) in estimated construction costs.

The company’s IPO prospectus said Tru Shrimp has received USD 70 million (EUR 61 million) in investments to-date but has incurred "significant net losses and negative cash flows.”

In 2015, Trū Shrimp Company signed an agreement giving it exclusive global rights to commercialize tidal-basin technology – also known as super-intensive raceway – and it expects to use that technology at its farm.