Coal Asia 10-for-1 stock split approved by SEC

Coal Asia [COAL 0.15 unch; 106% avgVol] [link] notified the exchange that its amended articles to change its par value from P1.00 per common share to P0.10 per common share were approved by the SEC. COAL said the change in par value is intended to “boost investor interest” in the stock and provide a “wider distribution” of the stock, which (COAL believes) will help in “shoring up its marketability.” In addition to the par value change, COAL also amended its primary and secondary purposes to allow the company to invest in companies engaged in energy generation (both traditional and renewable), energy transmission, water distribution, and to work directly in the resort casino business and the bulk water supply business.
 

MB bottom-line: I know it’s basically an automatic assumption nowadays that increasing the number of shares available by an order of magnitude has some positive impact on the market for a specific stock, but on the PSEi, I just don’t see it. The “satchetization” of COAL from something that costs P0.1540 per share to something that costs P0.0154 per share doesn’t feel like something that will encourage anybody to buy the stock. Is there really somebody out there, holding P50,000 worth of COAL across 324,675 shares, that is going to be more willing to buy and sell shares now that he or she holds P50,000 across 3,246,750 shares? Is someone who has never heard of COAL going to look at a sorted list of stock prices and see this stock listed for P0.0154/share and think, “hell yeah, that looks cheap, I’m going to sink a ton of cash into that.” Again, I don’t think so. It doesn’t magically push a greater percentage into the public float, which is something that actually COULD improve the daily sales volume, and it doesn’t address the lack of a coherent business plan, which is also something that could improve price and volume action. Crypto has shown that splitting almost nothing of value into 40 billion little pieces just isn’t the fun-feeling gimmick that it once was back when DOGE did it to mock the foolishness of the crypto shitcoin space. 

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