Agreed, so many reasons why the pandemic excuse is incredibly weak, it's simply not believable.

IMO, this was all the buyer, perhaps they don't have the money, or perhaps they want to renegotiate terms of the share sale agreement, sales contracts,etc as suggested by Lebowski.  The company likely hoped this would be resolved in short order, and held off as long as possible before letting us know.  As stated in the NR, they expect things "will be resolved in a mutually beneficial manner".  Sounds a lot like a negotiation to me.

Will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Never a dull moment!