Nasdaq halted trading in Sadot Group (SDOT) five times this morning as its shares collapsed as much as 72% from yesterday’s close.
The plunge followed a report from short-seller Fugazi Research, which declared that the company has “no meaningful fundamental value and is unsuitable for investment.”
The Nasdaq-listed agri-food company, once a burger chain known as Muscle Maker Grill, still has large financial obligations and evidently collapsing investor confidence.
By late morning in New York, the stock changed hands near $14, down about 65% from Tuesday’s $40.00 close. It briefly traded down to an intraday low of $11.01, or 72% below its 4pm price yesterday.
Each plunge tripped Nasdaq’s trading breakers, designed to maintain orderly market pricing.
As the volatile and relatively small company has swung wildly over the past few weeks, Nasdaq’s limit-up and limit-down circuit breakers have interrupted SDOT trading on roughly a dozen business days since early June.
From burgers to commodities trading
Fugazi Research’s report frames Sadot’s serial reinventions as “monkey-branching” across flimsy businesses. The report’s title derided the company, reading, “Raise Money, Change the Story, Sell Nothing, Repeat.”
The short-seller’s central allegation is that after all of Sadot’s pivots “there is no longer an operating business generating revenue.”
Sadot Group began as Muscle Maker, Inc., a fast-casual restaurant operator, rebranding in 2023 as a global agricultural commodities trader. It positioned itself alongside giants like Cargill and Bunge.
That trading arm booked $132 million in revenue in the first quarter of 2025. One year later, for the quarter ending March 31, 2026, that division reported $0.
Pivots came fast. Sadot sold Muscle Maker Grill and its Pokémoto restaurant brands to Marv Brands in December 2025.
It lost a food farm to a court judgment the same month.
Next, it sold its last trading unit, Sadot Latam LLC, on June 26 for $1,000 in cash plus a share of receivables it does not expect to collect.
As the company pivoted its strategic direction, its balance sheet persisted and deteriorated.
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Sadot Group’s lopsided balance sheet
The company’s Q1 filing shows total liabilities of $60.8 million against total assets of $2.4 million, a shareholders’ deficit of $58.4 million, and discloses substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern.
Management, meanwhile, have been busy diluting shareholders to try to rescue the failing enterprise. In early June it acquired a UAE software company and its trading platform for a headline $12 million, payable almost entirely in stock.
It also took a six-month option on a $125.5 million California real estate portfolio, again payable in stock.
These dilutive events for shareholders have decimated its long-term stock price. Sadot has executed three reverse stock splits within the past two years, most recently a 1-for-20 reverse split on May 27.
Shares have lost 90% of their value over the past 12 months, and 99% over the past five years.
Distressed companies use the reverse split maneuver to manufacture a share price above Nasdaq’s $1 minimum bid requirement per share.
Not enough stockholder equity
However, using reverse splits is not enough to stay listed. Separately, Nasdaq has warned that the company no longer meets its minimum stockholders’ equity rule, and also flagged it in April for filing its annual report late.
Nasdaq’s minimum equity requirement is “either a market value of listed securities of $35 million or net income from continuing operations of $500,000 in the most recently completed fiscal year or in two of the last three most recently completed fiscal years.”
It’s not a particularly high bar for a publicly traded company, yet Sadot Group is certainly struggling to meet it.
Nor is it particularly difficult for a public company to file annual reports on time, but Sadot failed to do that, too.
Fugazi Research also cited a near-term, upcoming catalyst as a possible date of reckoning.
On August 13, Sadot Group is due to release its Q2 earnings announcement. When it discloses results for this quarter, Fugazi Research predicts, the company could disclose that it doesn’t have an operating business generating revenue.
For now, the Nasdaq tape is recording the panic among traders vying for position ahead of the company’s upcoming disclosures about its good, bad, or possibly non-existent Q2 revenue.
SDOT traded as high as $106 intraday on July 2 and closed yesterday at $40.
Shares hit an intraday low of $11.01 today, and its terrifying 52-week range spans from $460 down to $2.63.