Adamas One—the company that purchased the remains of Scio, one of the original lab-grown diamond companies, in 2019—has listed new details on its proposed initial public offering (IPO) in an S-1 filed on Sept. 14.
Adamas is offering a total 4.9 million shares of stock. If each share comes in at its proposed price midpoint ($4.75), the company will raise $23.3 million. That’s a drop from the haul it reportedly first sought: $30 million. The filing said the IPO will net the company around $11.9 million.
Adamas plans to list on the Nasdaq Capital Market under the symbol “JEWL.” The business will target both the gem and industrial segments, and the filing said it “intend[s] to acquire other companies involved in the production of high-quality diamond materials and to pursue related commercial opportunities.”
The company’s chairman, president, and CEO is John “Jay” Grdina, the former Playboy executive who has headed hangover cure Noho and ammunition company Ammo Inc. (Read JCK’s interview with him here.) Gerald McGuire, Scio’s last CEO, will serve as the new company’s chief operating officer, and former Leviev CEO Thierry Chaunu will serve on its board.
The filing says Grdina and chief financial officer Steven Staehr will be given an annual “diamond allowance”—worth $84,000 in Grdina’s case, and $30,000 in Staehr’s case—with the diamonds valued at $1,000 a carat. So far, neither has received any stones.
Adamas’ prospectus warned, as it has in the past, that it faces a “risk of business failure.”
For the nine months ended June 30, 2022, it incurred a net loss of $6.4 million, even though it had $1.1 million in sales. As of June 30, 2022, it had an accumulated deficit of $36.7 million.
“The prior businesses that utilized our diamond technology have failed,” said the filing. “From inception through September 30, 2021, we have had no revenue, and we have had only minimal revenue since then.”
In its original filing, Adamas included language that appeared to duplicate without attribution passages from a 2018 Forbes article by Pam Danziger—a contention Danziger agreed with. That language remains in its new filing
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