🔒Slowed by clean up, Ideanomics’ W. Hartford campus timetable uncertain

Ideanomics is making progress on its envisioned redevelopment of the former UConn campus in West Hartford, but things didn’t exactly go as planned in 2019.

The New York-based company, which provides technology services to facilitate financial transactions in the transportation sector and other markets, faced delays and millions of dollars in cost overruns during the year on its $400 million-plus “Fintech Village” project, a result of higher-than-expected levels of environmental contamination on-site.

As of mid-December, crews were demolishing and remediating a second building on the campus. With two more buildings to go after that, it appears CEO Alf Poor’s recently expressed hopes of starting on-campus construction by spring 2020 were overly optimistic.

During an October interview at HBJ’s offices, Poor — who Ideanomics promoted to CEO from chief operating officer in early 2019 — seemed pleased that Fintech Village was still moving forward at all.

The level of toxic PCBs and other contaminants on-site gave Ideanomics’ management and investors pause, at one point endangering the project’s future.

“If I look back right now, I think we didn’t know in all aspects of the campus what we were facing,” Poor said. “There have been a number of small miracles that have made things move as fast as they have.”

Ultimately, Poor said it was Bruno Wu, Ideanomics’ former CEO and now chairman, who did the necessary convincing to keep the project going, even offering to cover certain costs himself if it got too pricey.

Wu and his wife Yang Lan had an estimated net worth of $1 billion in 2016, according to Forbes. He is Ideanomics’ largest stock owner, controlling nearly 30 percent of shareholder votes as of March, according to U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission filings.

Wu has kicked in millions of dollars to Ideanomics in the form of convertible notes, Poor said.

In November, Ideanomics disclosed to investors that remediation work, underway since July, would be completed by the second half of 2020. (The company told HBJ its latest estimate is “at best a forecast” and that work could be finished sooner.)

Meanwhile, as of press time, Ideanomics hadn’t yet filed a detailed project site plan with the town, which would spur a potentially lengthy public review process.

It was also unclear if the project’s grand scale, revealed in a splashy virtual flythrough over the summer, remains the same.

The flythrough showed a massive, multi-building project including a community center, civic plaza and numerous other facilities.

However, Ideanomics said more recently that its project plan is evolving based on the remediation and demolition work, as well as input it’s been gathering from local residents and businesses in West Hartford.

“We are making adjustments to the original plans … , and it’s possible that the ongoing cleanup and site preparation process will have an impact, as well,” the company told HBJ. “We feel the project is proceeding at the right pace given all that is going on.”

Ideanomics has said the rebuilt campus would house various pieces of its own operations, including relocated companies currently based in other countries, and also have space for fintech incubator companies and tech tenants interested in collaboration.

Poor said in October that as many as 1,000 people could work at Fintech Village, when fully built out.

The state has pledged $10 million to the project in exchange for a promised 330 new jobs.

New strategy

Meanwhile, Ideanomics underwent a major shift in its business model in 2019, as it made numerous acquisitions, growing its global employee count to approximately 250 as of October, according to Poor, up from 50 as of Dec. 2018.

Ideanomics says it’s now focused mainly on financing and procurement services for electric vehicle fleets and on fintech services, including blockchain-based technologies.

Through the first three quarters of 2019, Ideanomics booked a profit of $20.7 million.

The company’s stock price struggled late in the year, consistently closing at under $1 since mid-November, when it reported a third-quarter loss.

On its latest earnings call, frustrated investors probed the company about its $13.7 million third-quarter loss.

One individual, noting the company’s plummeting market cap, asked when investors could expect more coverage from financial analysts, in order to better understand how revenue will develop over the coming quarters, particularly in its complex electric vehicles business.

Ideanomics officials answered that the company’s novel financing offerings will take some time for more mainstream analysts to understand, but pledged to release more information into the market moving forward.