The Palmetto Insider

Collexis Holdings, the Columbia-based public company once held up by the University of South Carolina as a cornerstone tenant for Innovista, has decided it will no longer file information with government regulators about its financial condition.
 
Earlier this week, Collexis told the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission it was terminating the company’s reporting obligations.

“With the filing of the report, the company’s obligation to file periodic and current reports with the SEC, including Forms 10-K, 10-Q and 8-K, is immediately suspended,” the company said in the filing.

Essentially that means investors will no longer be able to track through the SEC the company’s performance, such as Collexis’ annual report, due earlier this fall. The company’s fiscal year ended June 30.

Collexis announced to great fanfare in 2007 plans to relocate to Innovista. Two years later, it’s simply trying to stay afloat. The company lost more than $5.4 million through the first nine months of its fiscal year.

That came on the heels of an $11.2 million loss during the previous year. Collexis’s stock, which sold for as much as $12 a share in 2007, currently trades for between 4 and 5 cents a share.

Despite the company’s problems and the fact it has never relocated to Innovista, it remains listed among “tenant profiles” on the Innovista website.

Then-University of South Carolina president Andrew Sorensen, a driving force behind Innovista and now a member of the company’s board, pinned high hopes on Collexis in 2007, when he made the announcement about the company moving into the research district.

“I am delighted that Collexis will become part of Innovista,” said Sorensen, who retired as president last year and serves as a distinguished professor at the University’s School of Medicine. “Collexis aligns very nicely with our research in alternative energy and fuel cells, the health sciences and computing. It is exactly the type of company that we want to have here.”

Collexis has been closely tied to Innovista and USC almost from the time it began in Columbia:

• In October 2007, it was announced that USC had signed an agreement with Collexis and SC Launch to create a partnership for hydrogen fuel research. The project was funded with $200,000. SC Launch is an arm of the S.C. Research Authority, created by the General Assembly. SC Launch is partly sustained by contributions to the Industry Partnership Fund, for which contributors receive dollar-for-dollar tax credits;
• Last November, former USC president Sorenson joined Collexis’s board.
• Collexis is a graduate of the USC Columbia Technology Incubator. The Incubator has received $572,000 in state tax dollars since its inception.

Collexis’ difficulties mirror that of Innovista, the 500-acre research campus that was originally touted as a public-private partnership. Despite costing taxpayers more than $100 million, Innovista has just a single tenant, the University of South Carolina’s Arnold School of Public Health. The venture has produced no private sector jobs.

Innovista was intended to be a center for research on hydrogen and other technologies, and a magnet for private companies building spin-off products. Nearly four years later, Innovista’s goals remain largely unrealized as a majority of the buildings constructed can’t even be completed for lack of funds.

Despite $140 million in public investment, most of Innovista remains unfinished and sits empty.

Collexis Holdings Inc., touted less than two years ago as one of Innovista’s first private tenants, continues to sink slowly into financial oblivion.

Stock in the publicly traded firm, which announced plans in October 2007 to relocate to the University of South Carolina’s development boondoggle, hit a new low this week, dipping down to 5 cents a share.

The collapse of Collexis, which now appears unlikely to ever move into USC’s research campus, has coincided with Innovista’s downfall. Tuesday, USC fired the Michigan developer tapped to build the private portion of Innovista.

USC pulled the plug on a deal with Kale Roscoe because he couldn’t land a loan to build the campus’ first private building — nine months after his deadline for starting construction, according to The State newspaper.

Roscoe is the second developer to leave the project. Roscoe replaced Raleigh developer Craig Davis last year, after Davis failed to build the building or deliver major tenants.

Innovista, originally intended as a center for research on hydrogen and other technologies, and a magnet for private companies building spin-off products, still has no private tenants nearly half a decade after the university announced the undertaking.

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