Under the influence of poor business development and frequent turbulence in senior management, Tucson, once the "first stock of autonomous driving," will face delisting after more than a thousand days of listing, becoming the world's first autonomous driving company to voluntarily delist.
On January 17th local time, Tucson Future announced its delisting from NASDAQ and terminated its registration with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, with an expected final trading day of February 7th.
After the announcement, Tucson's future stock price fell by more than 50% to 35 cents, a decrease of about 99% from its peak period. At its peak, the company's market value exceeded 12 billion US dollars, and currently its market value has evaporated by over 11.9 billion US dollars.
Tucson Future stated in its announcement that part of the reason for its voluntary delisting is due to a significant shift in the capital market, where rising interest rates and quantitative tightening have affected investor decisions. At the same time, the company's valuation and stock liquidity have declined, and stock price volatility has significantly increased. The company is undergoing a transformation, and I believe that as a private enterprise, I can better handle this transformation than as a listed company.
Tucson Future, founded in 2015, was one of the first startups in autonomous truck transportation. After going public in the United States in 2021, the outside world remained optimistic about its development, and Tucson once attracted well-known investor Cathie Wood to increase her holdings in the future.
But in the following years, the company was hit by a series of events such as regulatory scrutiny, frequent changes in management, and multiple layoffs and reorganizations, leading to a downturn. Last May, Tucson faced a suspension and delisting warning due to failure to submit financial report data on time.
Tucson will make adjustments in the future and announced in June that it may sell its US business, with the company's development focus shifting towards the Asia Pacific region.
The company has currently entered the Japanese market and conducted autonomous driving tests on highways. At the same time, it also completed the first fully unmanned test of autonomous heavy trucks on public roads in Shanghai. Meanwhile, Tucson intends to shift its focus from L4 level autonomous driving to parallel L4 and L2 in the future, and has already launched some products.
However, it remains to be seen whether Tucson, in the midst of difficulties, can regroup in the Asian market in the future. Some argue that the company has missed the golden period of domestic autonomous driving development.
"At present, the market no longer expects L4 and above autonomous driving to be achieved in a short period of time. Therefore, capital is starting to rethink which companies have investment value and when technology will break through. Enterprises are also shifting their focus from pursuing one-step success to improving the commercial landing efficiency of technology transfer," said Zhang Yichao, partner of AlixPartners' Greater China automotive consulting business
The industry reshuffle of L4 level autonomous driving has already begun earlier. In 2022, platform based autonomous driving companies Aurora, Ford, and Argo AI, an autonomous driving company invested by Volkswagen, have successively laid off employees or dissolved. Capital confidence has yet to fully recover, casting an uncertain shadow over Tucson's future development.
Regarding the industry development trend, Zhang Yichao stated that the reshuffle of L4 level autonomous driving companies is inevitable, but it is still unknown whether there will be a gathering of resources towards the top in the future. "If several leading companies successfully achieve commercialization in technological breakthroughs, the Matthew effect is likely to emerge."