What happened
It's official: After suffering another yet another big drop in share price -- down 28% as of 12:40 p.m. EDT -- shares of Helios and Matheson Analytics (HMNY +0.00%) now sell for a lower per-share price than they did last week, before the company effected its 250-for-1 reverse stock split.
The MoviePass owner's stock has declined more than 250 times in value (put another way, that's about a 99.6% drop in stock price) in the space of just eight trading days -- which has to be some kind of record.
MoviePass investors have seen this share price before. Will they stick around to watch a sequel? Image source: Getty Images.
So what
Is this significant to investors? Well, if truth be told, most investors who put their faith in MoviePass management for the long term had already been close to wiped out before today's latest development. At this point, it's more of a distinction between whether you lost "almost all" of your money or whether you lost "essentially all" of your money on the investment.
Now what
Of course, knowing that isn't much help to Helios shareholders today. So what should you do now?
As of yesterday, and according to its press releases at least, MoviePass is still fighting. "To paraphrase Mark Twain," says the discount movie ticket seller, "talk of our demise is greatly exaggerated," and MoviePass is "still standing."
In the release -- which was totally devoid of any revenue or profit figures that might encourage its existing shareholders -- MoviePass touted its role in bringing audiences out to see such not-quite-blockbusters as Tag, Book Club, and RGB this year. MoviePass argued, in essence, that it's good for the movie industry and deserves to live.
With its current stock near-worthless, but a new authorization to issue as many as 2 billion new shares in hand, expect MoviePass to try at least one more round of recapitalization, and try at least one more time to convince investors that that's true. (But don't expect existing shareholders to stick around, waiting to be diluted down to zero. They're selling fast.)
