One of Greensboro’s biggest economic development successes in recent years is now a big bust.
ProKidney is a publicly traded company and soon after the company agreed to locate a giant biomedical operation in Greensboro in 2023, the stock began falling like a rock from levels near $13 a share until it was, at some times, flirting with becoming a penny stock, which is a stock that falls to under a dollar a share.
Though management remained publicly committed to the Greensboro facility, this month it became obvious that the company is not coming.
In June 2023, ProKidney announced that the company planned to invest $485 million in a Greensboro biomedical factory that would create roughly 330 jobs – with those jobs averaging just under $75,000 a year.
Local economic development officials were delighted and the City of Greensboro, Guilford County government, the State of North Carolina and Duke Energy all threw in millions in economic incentives for the company, though, since it will now be a no-go, none of that money will be paid out.
Earlier this month, ProKidney put the supposed Greensboro facility up for sale.
One local economic development official who asked not to be identified said that one reason for the decision seemed to be that new management at the top of ProKidney wanted the company to refocus its efforts and do more in Winston-Salem, where the company is based.
Some local officials are optimistic that ProKidney could at some point later in time eventually place a big project in Greensboro; however, right now it seems as though there’s very little chance of that happening.
Right after the biotech company announced last summer it was building the $458 million facility in Greensboro and hiring hundreds of workers, the company’s stock was flying pretty high.
However, since then, the fall of the company’s stock price has been nothing short of amazing.
In a financial report released in November 2023, ProKidney officials stated that the company was well capitalized “for its future growth plans,” and, at that time, management didn’t suggest any change of plans for the Greensboro operations, though city leaders were getting skeptical about the giant project at that point.
The stock was trading at over $13 a share on August 1, 2023, when the future looked golden and the company had just closed on the purchase of the 210,000-square-foot building in Greensboro. It planned to put a new facility there where the company would make “REACT,” which was considered ProKidney’s key product for treating kidney disease.
By late September 2023, however, the stock had fallen to under $5 a share.
On Wednesday, Jan. 17, 2024, the stock traded as low as $1.33 a share and closed at $1.37. ProKidney stock had fallen as low as $1.12 per share in late 2023.
The Winston-Salem-based company maintained radio silence regarding the Greensboro project during 2024 despite the fact that the City of Greensboro, Guilford County, the State of North Carolina and Duke Energy had approved incentives packages that totaled over $35 million for ProKidney, contingent on the company completing its stated plans for its Greensboro operation.
On Friday, Nov. 22, the stock closed at $1.69 a share, which was up from its 52-week low of $1.18 a share.
