Hot on the heels of Titan Medical’s announcement last week that 48 of its 66 employees would be laid off, the surgical robotics maker has axed about a quarter of the remaining roles.
The latest wave of layoffs hit four of the company’s executives, Titan announced Tuesday, leaving only six members of the leadership team listed on the website.
The laid-off leaders are Tammy Carrea, vice president of quality and regulatory affairs; Kristen Galfetti, VP of investor relations and corporate communications; Eric Heinz, VP of market and corporate development; and Chris Seibert, VP of upstream marketing. However, all four execs have agreed to stay on as independent consultants within those realms amid Titan’s ongoing strategic review process.
“I would like to thank Tammy, Kristen, Eric and Chris for their contributions to Titan Medical and their continued professionalism,” CEO Cary Vance said in the announcement. “This was an extremely difficult decision, and I am grateful that each of these talented individuals will continue to be available in consulting roles to assist the company during the strategic review process.”
The strategic review began in November, when Titan said it would explore a possible sale, merger or any other “significant transaction” that could help keep its head above water. The decision came at the end of a year in which Titan had hemorrhaged money: It reported only $11.6 million in cash and cash equivalents as of the end of September, down from the $32.3 million it had at the start of the year.
The company proceeded to furlough 40 of its workers in December. When the search for a buyer came up short earlier this month, it permanently laid off all of those employees plus a handful of others.
Titan originally said the furloughs would allow its remaining workforce to focus only on the strategic review and on readying its Enos single-access robotic surgery system for clinical trials. With the full-scale layoffs announced last week, however, the latter task has gone out the window, as the company said in that announcement that its leftover employees would focus primarily on selling off either all or a portion of its assets.
Alongside the latest round of layoffs, Titan also disclosed that it has received yet another warning notice from the Nasdaq.
The company has been in hot water with the stock exchange for over a year, ever since its shares failed to rise above the required $1 minimum for 30 consecutive business days at the end of 2021. Titan spent all of 2022 attempting to regain compliance, but to no avail: Its stock price spent most of the year hovering around the 50-cent mark. That prompted the Nasdaq to make moves to officially delist the stock in the final days of 2022, but the process is currently on hold as Titan has requested a hearing on the matter.
In the meantime, Titan’s stock has reached an all-time low. Though it briefly topped the $1 mark in mid-January, the back-to-back layoffs this month sent it to a new nadir of just $0.13 per share on Tuesday.
And now, Titan has fallen even further from compliance with the stock exchange’s rules. Amid last week’s layoffs, the company noted that Heather Knight, one of its independent directors and a member of its audit committee, had stepped down. Her departure left Titan without a majority of independent directors on the board and shrank the audit committee to fewer than the required three members—triggering yet another Nasdaq notice.
Titan now has at least six months and up to a full year—depending on the timing of its next annual shareholders’ meeting—to regain compliance with the Nasdaq’s requirements.