(Yicai Global) June 24 -- Luckin Coffee shares [NASDAQ:LK] plummeted 12.26 percent to close at USD2.79 yesterday after going as low as 16 percent following its announcement the same day of its receipt of another delisting notice from the Nasdaq Stock Market, this time for failure to file its annual report.

The Xiamen-based Starbucks challenger received such a notice in May from the exchange out of "public interest concerns" based on the fabricated transactions that Luckin Coffee disclosed in early April and a failure to divulge other critical information.

Luckin Coffee publicly admitted on April 2 that its chief operating officer and other employees had faked sales figures by as much as CNY2.2 billion (USD310 million).

“The Company has been working diligently to explore possible ways to file the Annual Report as soon as possible,” said Luckin in the statement, adding, “However, the company has not been able to file the [it] due to the impact of the delayed financial statement preparation process caused by Covid-19 and the pendency of the previously disclosed internal investigation.”

The firm's Chief Executive Jenny Qian and the Chief Operating Officer Liu Jian got their walking papers on May 12 in the wake of the scandal.

The US Senate passed the Holding Foreign Companies Accountable Act in May. This legislation requires US-listed companies to certify "they are not owned or controlled by a foreign government" and submit to an audit that the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board can review. This bill may thus delist Chinese companies from the Nasdaq, NYSE and other exchanges for failing to abide by US securities laws. Several US law firms have filed class action lawsuits against Luckin.

Editor: Ben Armour