SiliconBeat

Remember Planktos, the company we first wrote about in September when it reported receiving $2 million in its carbon-credits business from an unnamed investor?

The Foster City company said Wednesday in a “shareholder update” distributed by Business Wire that it is considering “winding down” its operations. (We couldn’t find any mention of the news with the SEC or on the company’s own web site as of the time we posted this.)

The profitless company, whose focus is “sequestering carbon dioxide in the environment utilizing known technology intended to restore the world’s oceans and forests”, has been unable to line up the additional $2 million in funding that it said it needed to continue operations through its next fiscal year in its quarterly financial filing on Dec. 10.

Planktos had other bad news to announce. Its shares were removed by Nasdaq from its Over-the-Counter Bulletin Board Wednesday and will now trade in the Pink Sheets, because the company was too often late in filing its financial reports, according to the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, a regulator set up by Nasdaq in July to help protect investors.

One of the company’s two projects to create carbon credits includes restoring plankton
life underwater. It was dealt a setback when the company’s research vessel was denied entry to the port of Las Palmas in the Canary Islands where it planned to take on scientific equipment from its partners at the University of Las Palmas to begin joint research activities into the company’s “ocean fertilization” project.

In September, when Planktos reported the $2 million investment from a mystery shareholder, who reportedly paid $1 a share in August, its shares were trading at 54 cents. They closed Wednesday at 12 cents.

At least one voice is wondering why various filings by Planktos over the last several months don’t seem to add up.