QualMark Corporation (OTCMKTS:QMRK) Still Moving on Buyout News

On Friday the mad price action QualMark Corporation (OTCMKTS:QMRK) enjoyed in the previous session slowed down considerably but the stock managed to put on another 12% nonetheless. The reason for the insane price surge easily visible on the chart is a press release the company dropped last week.

QMRK is a truly peculiar case. The company is currently a Pink No Information stock, stamped with the red STOP sign on OTC Markets, and flagged as “Dark or defunct”. This is all due to the fact that the last publicly available financial report coming from QMRK is now nearly eight years old. The company last published financials back in the spring of 2008.

Despite this massive informational blackout, which left QMRK wallowing about on zero daily share volume for the better part of the past few months, the news the company put up on Thursday led to a close 515% up. QMRK announced entering into a merger agreement with a certain Espec Corp – an entity based in Japan.

There is little information concerning the specifics of the agreement but at the very least there is a reciprocal press announcement on Espec’s own website, confirming the deal and describing it as a “reverse triangular merger”. If the merger does go through and is finalized, QualMark shareholders will receive cash from the company and all QMRK shares will be canceled.

The document published by the Japanese company does list newer financial information for QMRK, with $7.3 million listed under QMRK net assets and $365 thousand in annual 2014 net income. It’s a little disconcerting that the figures were not officially released by the company in its own public filings and that despite a commendable performance with a positive bottom line, QMRK did not take the time and effort to get investors up to speed and disseminate its own press release through more channels.

It remains to be seen whether the reverse merger does go through as planned.