FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Navigating Cross-Border Complexities & Capital Realities.
The real costs, timelines, and operational demands of establishing and maintaining a NASDAQ listing alongside your TSX/TSXV presence.
MJDS-Eligible Issuers (Fast-Track): If your Canadian company qualifies under the Multi-Jurisdictional Disclosure System (MJDS)—requiring a 12-month Canadian reporting history and a public float of at least $75 million USD—the process can be completed in 8 to 12 weeks.
Standard Registration / Corporate Combinations: For early-stage or emerging TSXV issuers that do not meet the MJDS thresholds, the timeline is typically 4 to 6 months to accommodate US GAAP conversion, a PCAOB-compliant audit, and standard SEC/NASDAQ registration comment periods.
For the NASDAQ Capital Market (the entry tier for most emerging-growth companies):
- Initial Entry / Application Fee: $5,000 USD.
- Total All-Inclusive Annual Fee: Ranges from $50,000 to $75,000 USD, calculated based on your total shares outstanding.
Beyond exchange fees, a standard transition budget generally routes as follows:
Canadian issuers can establish a sponsored American Depositary Receipt (ADR) facility. You can bundle multiple existing Canadian common shares into a single US-traded ADR to structurally clear the $4.00 minimum initial bid price—completely avoiding a stressful domestic share consolidation.
NASDAQ enforces tight regulatory boundaries to protect market integrity:
- Unrestricted Public Float Thresholds: Companies applying via income-based criteria must maintain a minimum of $15 million USD in unrestricted publicly held shares, limiting the viability of tightly held, illiquid shells.
- The $5M Market Value Continued Listing Rule: NASDAQ mandates a minimum Market Value of Listed Securities (MVLS) of $5 million USD. If a dual-listed company drops below this threshold for 30 consecutive business days, it faces suspension and delisting with no compliance cure period.
Traditional investment banks operate on underwriting volumes and tend to structure a cross-listing as a standard, high-dilution IPO because that maximizes their commissions. Emry Capital works entirely as an independent advisor—we evaluate direct shell combinations, ADR implementations, and dual-listings purely on what protects your legacy cap table and maximizes your opening market valuation.