TNL Mediagene Won a Second Nasdaq Panel Exception in Eight Months. The 1-for-20 Split That Saved It in January Is the Reason It Got No Cure Period in June.

by Renée Delacroix · August 25, 2026

Senior Analyst, The MicroCap Herald

A Nasdaq Hearings Panel granted TNL Mediagene Inc. (Nasdaq: TNMG) continued listing on The Nasdaq Capital Market on Aug. 23, subject to two conditions, the Tokyo-based digital media and data group said in a release disclosing the decision. The company must demonstrate compliance with Listing Rule 5550(a)(2), the $1.00 minimum bid price rule, by Sept. 21, and with Listing Rule 5550(b)(1), the stockholders' equity rule, by Oct. 30. Both dates are still ahead.

It is the company's second Panel exception in eight months, and the two are connected by a single decision the company took in December.

The first sequence began on Nov. 6, 2025, when Nasdaq's Listing Qualifications staff issued a delisting determination after the company failed to regain bid-price compliance within its 180-calendar-day period, according to a December release. TNL Mediagene appealed on Nov. 13 and was granted a hearing held Dec. 16.

Its compliance plan was a share consolidation. Shareholders approved a range of up to 1-for-100 on Dec. 2, 2025; the board fixed the ratio at 1-for-20 on Dec. 9; the company announced it on Dec. 19; and the ordinary shares began trading on a split-adjusted basis on Dec. 23, 2025. The consolidation applied to ordinary shares rather than to American depositary shares, the ticker was unchanged, a new CUSIP was assigned, and fractional entitlements were rounded up. The company said at the time that the consolidation was intended to raise the per-share trading price to meet the $1.00 requirement and to "enhance the Company's attractiveness to a broader range of institutional investors, particularly among institutions that require a minimum share price for investment."

It worked, narrowly. The Panel granted continued listing on Dec. 23, 2025, in a decision the company disclosed the following day, conditioned on demonstrating $1.00 bid-price compliance by Jan. 7, 2026. The Panel also imposed a Discretionary Panel Monitor on the company for one year under Listing Rule 5815(d)(4)(A), in a letter dated Jan. 20, 2026, as the company's later disclosure sets out.

By spring both listing standards were in question. On May 6, 2026 the staff notified the company that it did not satisfy Rule 5550(b)(1), which requires $2,500,000 in stockholders' equity for continued listing on the Capital Market, and gave it until June 22 to submit a compliance plan. TipRanks reported on May 12 that the equity figure disclosed in the company's fiscal 2025 annual report on Form 20-F was $918,088. That figure is drawn from TipRanks' account of the filing rather than from the Form 20-F itself, and neither Nasdaq release states it.

The bid price failed again shortly afterward. The stock closed below $1.00 for 30 consecutive business days from May 7 through June 18, 2026, and on June 22 the staff issued a delisting determination citing both Rule 5550(a)(2) and the previously disclosed equity shortfall.

This is where the December consolidation returns. In the ordinary course, a company that falls below $1.00 receives an automatic 180-calendar-day compliance period before any determination. TNL Mediagene received none, because Rule 5810(c)(3)(A)(iv) withholds that compliance period from a company that has effected a reverse split within the prior one-year period, as the company's own June disclosure explains. The 1-for-20 that produced January's compliance is the same event that removed the automatic runway in June.

That is the structural trade a micro-cap makes when it consolidates to clear a bid-price deadline. The split converts a recurring cure right into a single fix that must hold for twelve months. If the price falls back inside that window, the company goes straight to a staff determination and, if it wants to keep trading, straight to a Hearings Panel. TNL Mediagene requested that hearing on June 29, which stayed the delisting, and the hearing was held Aug. 4.

What the Aug. 23 decision grants is an exception, not compliance. The release says the Panel "has reserved the right to reconsider the terms of the exception based on any event, condition or circumstance that exists or develops that would, in the opinion of the Panel, make continued listing of the Company's securities on Nasdaq inadvisable or unwarranted," and that the decision "requires the Company to provide prompt notification of any significant events occurring during the exception period that may affect the Company's compliance with Nasdaq requirements." The company's own release says "There can be no assurance that the Company will satisfy the conditions of the Panel's decision or otherwise regain compliance with the applicable listing requirements, and a failure to do so would result in the delisting of the Company's securities from Nasdaq."

The release did not state how many consecutive sessions at or above $1.00 the Panel will require, nor what the company intends to do about the equity condition. It disclosed no reverse split plan, no financing, no asset sale and no restructuring. It also disclosed no updated equity or share-count figures, leaving the $918,088 reported from the fiscal 2025 Form 20-F as the last publicly reported measure against the $2,500,000 floor.

TNL Mediagene was formed in May 2023 through the merger of Taiwan's The News Lens and Japan's Mediagene and employs approximately 480 people, providing advertising, marketing technology, content commerce and data analytics from a Tokyo base. It now carries two open listing deficiencies at once, a one-year Discretionary Panel Monitor imposed by the January 2026 letter, a consolidation history that has cost it automatic cure rights, and a Panel exception the Panel itself can revisit. Both Panel deadlines fall within the next ten weeks, and a failure on either one would, on the company's own statement, result in delisting.