Cordlife calls for trading halt after shares sink to all-time low, pending announcement

SHARES of troubled private cord-blood bank Cordlife Group fell 15.2 per cent before it requested a trading halt at 2.30 pm on Friday (Apr 19), pending the release of an announcement.

As at 1.59 pm, the counter was trading down S$0.022 at S$0.123, with 125,200 shares changing hands, and registering an all-time low since its listing in 2012.

The most recent update from the group came on Wednesday, as it proposed to raise S$8.2 million by issuing a total of 51.2 million new ordinary shares at S$0.16 apiece.

Later that day, it filed a police report against some of its former employees, following the preliminary findings of an internal investigation conducted by an external consultant.

On Apr 8, Cordlife said it found that 5,300 cord-blood units stored in one of the six tested tanks and one dry shipper were at high-risk of being damaged by the temperature excursions. It then moved to offer annual fee refunds and waivers of subsequent fees for customers whose cord-blood units were stored in this tank and dry shipper.

While preliminary testing has shown that the other five tanks – which contain around 13,700 cord-blood units – are considered low-risk, Cordlife said it will send 200 samples from these tanks for testing, which could take up to a year to complete.