Key points:
- Field Trip Health Cahnges To Reunion Neuroscience Today
- FTRP changes to REUN
- There's also a 500% price change, but this is purely nominal
Reunion Neuroscience (NASDAQ: REUN), formerly known as Field Trip Health (NASDAQ: FTRP) stock should be up 500% today at the open of the market. This is a purely nominal change in price in order to accord with the NSDAQ minimum offer price rules in order to maintain the listing and quotation. It's also the final part of a reorganisation of the business as a whole. It's important for us to understand that a 5x change in the REUN stock price is purely nominal – it's any variance from that which gives us the effect of the change in the business structure. After all, prices are information and we've got to get what that information is straight in our heads.
As background, as Field Trip Health Ltd (NASDAQ: FTRP) the company developed medical uses for psychedelics. This is an obvious line of thought for if a certain drug changes mental state then might it be of use to those who require their mental state changed? It's clearly not something that's going to be easy to shepherd through the authorisation process but there is the advantage that we know psychedelics do change mental states already.
However, FTRP stock is down 83% on the year and this poses problems. It's necessary to maintain a minimum offer price of $1 to keep the NASDAQ quotation – failing that means relegation to the OTC markets. So, something needed to be done to solve this little problem and something actually was.
Note that this is the Toronto Quote, in Canadian Dollars
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One part of the reorganisation was to split the company. The part that dealt with retreats, treatments and so on spins off into Field Trip H&W and lists separately on the TSX. The part that deals with trying to gain proper pharmaceutical drug licencing for psychedelic derived treatments becomes Reunion and maintains the NASDAQ (and other) listings but under the new ticker REUN. All of which is fine but it doesn't solve the problem of the stock price being under $1.
So, one more stage is undertaken. Our old friend the reverse stock split – a consolidation to Brits. This is known as a 1 for 5 when it should be the other way around, a 5 for 1 – but that's the way the language works here. Every 5 shares of the old FTRP become one piece of stock in the new REUN. This should mean a 500% change in the nominal price of each piece of stock. Of course it doesn't change the overall valuation of REUN, just the number of pieces of paper that make up ownership of it. It also doesn't change the value of any specific stockholding in the company.
The reason it's done is simply that the New York markets think that penny stocks are somehow risky, even disreputable. Therefore you cannot have a major exchange listing if you are a penny stock. It's fashion, perhaps custom, and nothing more than that.