Who is behind MCAH? Mountain Crest (Suying Liu)
The people who set Mountain Crest Acquisition 6 up, what they have done before, and what happened to the shareholders who backed their earlier vehicles — every outcome cited to an SEC filing.
Post-close outcome quality: 2 priced deSPACs vs trust value (prior vehicles against the $10.00 IPO baseline, in-DB vehicles against the trust they filed): median -94%, 0/2 still worth at least half of trust, 1 at under a tenth of it. Worst: BTTX -100%. Best: PLBY -87%. n=2, pulled toward neutral. 1 other completion(s) not priced (1 no stored price) — left OUT of the ratio, not guessed.
Weak record · medium confidence — the same inputs always produce the same score.
Track record
The fleet this sponsor runs today, and the SEC-verified fate of every prior vehicle we have traced.
- Mountain Crest Acquisition Corp I · 2020→ Playboy / PLBY GroupPLBYCompleted
- Mountain Crest Acquisition Corp II · 2020→ Better TherapeuticsBTTXCompleted
- Mountain Crest Acquisition Corp IV · 2021Liquidated
- Mountain Crest Acquisition Corp III · 2021→ ETAO International (approved, then collapsed)Terminated
- Mountain Crest Acquisition Corp V · 2021→ delisted to OTCSearching
Mountain Crest — Suying Liu's franchise. Prior-vehicle track record (SEC-verified via formerNames): COMPLETED — Mountain Crest Acquisition Corp I → Playboy / PLBY Group (PLBY, Nasdaq, still listed); Mountain Crest II → Better Therapeutics (2022; bankrupt/delisted, 25-NSE 2024-05). FAILED/ENDED — Mountain Crest III: ETAO International merger approved (DEFM14A 2023-01) but the vehicle filed Form 25-NSE to delist weeks later (Feb 2023); Mountain Crest IV: deal fell through, LIQUIDATED (25-NSE + 15-12G 2024-04); Mountain Crest V (MCAG): delisted from Nasdaq to OTC (25-NSE 2025-04). Net: 2 completed (only Playboy survives listed; Better Therapeutics bankrupt), 3 failed/liquidated/delisted — a weak operator record. Sources: SEC EDGAR submissions API (formerNames) + full-text search, efts.sec.gov. — research profile — Mountain Crest is a prolific SPAC sponsor franchise controlled by Dr. Suying Liu, who serves as chairman, CEO, and CFO across the family of vehicles. Liu holds a doctorate in corporate finance from Washington University's Olin School of Business (awarded May 2015) and previously worked as an investment strategist at J.P. Morgan Chase from July 2015 to October 2018, chief strategist at real estate investment firm Mansion Capital, and head of corporate strategy at Hudson Capital Inc. (NASDAQ: HUSN). He is based in New York and describes himself as having broad industry expertise and transaction experience across banking, investment, and real estate. The Mountain Crest vehicles are incorporated in the British Virgin Islands and target businesses in North America and the Asia-Pacific region, leveraging Liu's stated network with Asian consumer markets to help North American companies tap overseas demand. His first, Mountain Crest Acquisition Corp (MCAC), raised $57.5 million in a June 2020 IPO and merged with Playboy Enterprises (now PLBY Group, Nasdaq: PLBY) in February 2021 at a deal size of approximately $372.7 million; Liu joined Playboy's board upon closing. Mountain Crest Acquisition Corp II merged with digital therapeutics company Better Therapeutics (BTTX) in 2021. Mountain Crest Acquisition Corp III, which raised $50 million in a May 2021 IPO, merged with digital healthcare platform ETAO International (OTC: ETAOF) in 2023. Mountain Crest Acquisition Corp IV merged with Chinese auto manufacturer CH-AUTO, but that company ultimately did not list on a major exchange — a clear disappointment. Mountain Crest Acquisition Corp V, which raised approximately $69 million in 2021, has a pending merger with diagnostics company CUBEBIO. The sixth vehicle, Mountain Crest Acquisition 6 Corp. (MCAHU), priced its $60 million IPO in late April 2026, selling 6 million units at $10 each with D. Boral Capital as sole bookrunner. The de-SPAC performance across this franchise raises significant concerns. Playboy (PLBY), the flagship deal, has seen its stock collapse to approximately $1.18–$1.39 per share, a dramatic decline from the combination valuation. Several other merged entities — ETAO International and CH-AUTO — ended up trading on OTC markets rather than major exchanges, and CH-AUTO failed to list on an exchange at all. These outcomes suggest that the quality of target companies brought public through the Mountain Crest platform has been uneven at best, with multiple deals resulting in illiquid, low-priced OTC securities for investors. The pattern of merged companies failing to maintain major-exchange listings is a notable red flag for prospective investors in the sixth vehicle. Additional red flags include Liu's own share-selling activity and a governance departure. On March 28, 2023, Liu resigned from his position as managing member of the sponsor of Mountain Crest Acquisition Corp V, relinquishing…
1 sentence withheld from the text above. It stated a vehicle count (six vehicles) that does not reconcile with the record we counted: 7 vehicles — 2 in the live database and 5 SEC-verified prior vehicles. Neither side has been corrected here, and the stored research is unchanged; a count we cannot reconcile is not a count we will publish.
Full sponsor record →Why the sponsor matters
The thirty-second version, for anyone who has never traded a SPAC.
A SPAC is an empty listed company; the sponsor is the only substance it has before a deal. They pick the target, negotiate the terms, and typically hold founder shares — equity they received nearly free — which pay off for them even in deals that lose public holders money. A sponsor’s prior vehicles are the closest thing to evidence about how this one ends.
How the founder-share incentive works is covered in our plain-English guide to the sponsor promote.
In plain English
Cash in trust / trust per sharethe cash the company is holding for each public share
Filed quarterly in the 10-Q's XBRL. It earns interest between filings, so the figure on a given day is slightly higher than the last filed one — where we show that we label it an estimate.
Dilutionhow much of the company new shares take from you
Sponsor promote, PIPE shares, warrants and rights all issue stock that did not pay $10 for it. The headline deal value is before that; the effective value is after.
De-SPACthe day the SPAC becomes the real company
The shares stop being a claim on a pot of cash and start being equity in an operating business. Roughly 80% of recent de-SPACs traded below $10 within a year.