Aquaculture technology company AquaBounty has filed a prospectus with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to open up over 8 million shares for resale, nearly two years since the company ceased all salmon-farming operations.
AquaBounty’s prospectus is for the resale “from time to time” of up to 8,077,043 shares of common stock at a par value of less than USD 0.01 (EUR 0.01) per share, composed of 5,771,929 shares of Series A Convertible Preferred Stock and 2,305,114 shares of Series B Convertible Preferred Stock. As of 9 October, the last reported share price of common stock on the Nasdaq Capital Market was USD 1.05 (EUR 0.93) per share, according to the company.
The prospectus comes as the company continues to operate under heavy financial pressure.
In its latest Form 10-Q covering the period ending 30 June of this year, the company indicated it has an accumulated deficit of USD 391 million (EUR 348 million), just under the paid-in capital of USD 393 million (EUR 350 million) investors have placed in the project. Despite that USD 393 million investment, the company no longer has any facilities and has already auctioned off some of the equipment that was intended for its planned Pioneer, Ohio, U.S.A-based salmon recirculating aquaculture system (RAS) facility.
In its prospectus, the company disclosed that JobsOhio, which provided it support in its selection of the Ohio location, is requesting repayment of USD 1 million (EUR 890,000) in an economic development grant by 31 December as AquaBounty had committed to creating 112 jobs with associated payroll of USD 5.4 million (EUR 4.8 million) and fixed asset investments of USD 221.1 million (EUR 196.7 million). Currently, the company only has three employees, and it failed to invest the required money after pausing construction of its farm.
The company is pursuing additional solutions and said it is undertaking a strategic review of the Ohio farm project to determine whether there are potential power generation, energy development, digital infrastructure, or other opportunities.
At one point in time, AquaBounty operated aquaculture facilities in the U.S. and in Canada.
After doubling down on its planned Ohio farm, it sold its RAS facility in the U.S. state of Indiana to Superior Fresh in July 2024 and then sold its facility in Rollo Bay on Prince Edward Island, Canada, in September of the same year. Two years later, Superior Fresh has already harvested salmon from the facility it purchased, and the Rollo Bay facility is now being operated by Kelly Cove Salmon, a subsidiary of Cooke.
AquaBounty had originally planned to break ground in Ohio in 2021 and later followed through in April 2022. At the time, it proposed building new farms every two years and suggested massive international expansions of its model. It raised money via multiple stock offerings and was the first company to receive approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to sell its genetically engineered salmon in the U.S. in 2015, though that was delayed by a court ruling in 2020 and the salmon was put back under FDA assessment in 2022, which finally reapproved it in 2023.
Despite the plans and approvals, the company only managed to make it just over a year before soaring costs forced it to pause construction, and since that time, it has slowly sold off assets.
Based on its latest financial report, the company has USD 1.9 million (EUR 1.7 million) in operating cash and an estimated USD 9.6 million (EUR 8.5 million) in assets. The company also posted USD 1.3 million (EUR 1.1 million) in losses from continuing operations in Q2 2026 and USD 2.25 million (EUR 2 million) over the first half of the year.
