Chardan China Acquisition Corp. has completed its acquisition of State Harvest Holdings Limited and changed its name to Origin Agritech Limited. Effective today, the securities of the company have begun trading on Nasdaq under the symbols SEED, SEEDW, and SEEDU.
The purchase price was $10 million and 10 million shares of common stock. In the event that certain benchmarks are obtained, the shareholders of State Harvest could receive additional cash payments totaling $15 million.
Subsequent to the acquisition, the company will have approximately 15,100,000 shares outstanding, of which 4,025,000 were sold in the IPO. The IPO was completed on November 10, 2003 and raised gross proceeds totaling $24,150,000. The original insiders of Chardan China own 875,000 common shares.
The IPO units, which consisted of one share of common stock and warrants to purchase two additional shares at $5.00 per share, were sold at $6.00 per unit. The common shares and warrants closed today at $9.14 and $4.20, respectively, giving the units a value of $17.54.
As described by the company:
Origin specializes in the research, development, production, sale and distribution of hybrid crop seeds. Origin is headquartered in Beijing, China, with a U.S. office in San Diego, CA. Origin owns or leases facilities in, among other locations, Beijing, Gansu, Henan, Helongjiang, Liaoning, Jilin, Hainan and the Sichuan Provinces. Revenues for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2004 were U.S. $36.4 million, a 57% increase from U.S. $23.2 million in fiscal 2003. Net income for fiscal 2004 increased 126% to U.S. $7.9 million from U.S. $3.5 million in 2003.
Since its inception, Origin has focused on producing its own premium hybrid seeds. Since the introduction of a new hybrid takes a minimum of 5-6 years to traverse the processes of development, testing, and obtaining regulatory approval verifying that the new hybrid has a yield of at least 8% more than previous hybrids, the Company was forced to rely on licensed hybrids during its first few years of operation. Origin launched its first entirely internally developed seed in 2003 after 6 years of research and development. During 2004 the Company introduced four new proprietary corn hybrids to the market. In 2005 Origin had five new proprietary corn hybrids and one new proprietary cotton hybrid approved by the government registration office. Origin anticipates that it will introduce approximately 40 new proprietary products into the Government testing and approval cycle between now and 2008.
The final prospectus for the transaction can be found at:
sec.gov |
