Maritime Launch Services (MLS) said Thursday the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) has conditionally approved its shares for listing, a move that would take the developer of Spaceport Nova Scotia from Cboe Canada to the country’s main stock market.
The Halifax company must still meet the exchange’s customary listing requirements and receive final sign-off. Its shares will keep the symbol MAXQ and trade on Cboe Canada until TSX trading begins, and the company says it will announce both the start date and the end of its Cboe Canada listing in a later update. The shares also trade over the counter in the United States as MAXQF.
On Cboe Canada, the shares rose to 44 cents in afternoon trading Thursday, valuing the company at about $335 million.
“We have made significant progress in transitioning Spaceport Nova Scotia from development to execution,” said Stephen Matier, the president and chief executive. “This listing will strengthen our visibility in Canadian capital markets as we continue to build the infrastructure, deliver on our customer commitments and advance the operational capabilities needed to establish sovereign orbital launch capability in Canada.”
TMX Group, which operates the TSX, says a listing on its senior exchange gives companies greater access to capital, more analyst coverage, more interest from institutional investors and easier trading in their shares. A TSX listing is also a requirement for inclusion in most stock indices, the exchange operator says in its guide for companies moving up from its junior TSX Venture Exchange.
MLS went public in April 2022 by merging into a dormant listed shell, Jaguar Financial, and began trading on the NEO Exchange, now Cboe Canada, at about 17 cents a share. For years it got by with small funding raises.
MLS has since signed a 10-year deal leasing a launch pad to the Department of National Defence (DND) and a facilities agreement with Germany’s Isar Aerospace, which in September finalized the work plan for a dedicated pad. In the second quarter the company reported its first quarterly profit, on revenue of $5.6 million. All of these factors contributed to MLS receiving conditional approval to list on the TSX.
Once its shares trade on the TSX, MLS can start working toward a place in the S&P/TSX Composite, the benchmark index of the exchange’s largest companies that many Canadian funds track. S&P Dow Jones Indices, which runs the index, adds a company only after it has been listed on the TSX for six full calendar months.
The index also requires an average share price of at least $1 over the prior three months, more than twice where MLS trades now. The company must also be big enough to make up a minimum slice of the index, and its shares must change hands often enough to pass a liquidity test.
A TSX listing would put MLS on the same exchange as MDA Space, Telesat and Calian Group. Joining the benchmark will take a higher share price, and time.