Key points:
- PIXY stock is down 90% on the year, 99% from peaks
- We can also describe it as up 7,235% this morning, or down 28%
- So, which is the right number to be using?
ShiftPixy (NASDAQ: PIXY) is down 90% over the past 12 months, 99% since its glory days of 2019 and the like. It's also up 7,235% today which will please at least some. Except if we're accurate about this, this shows that ShiftPixy is in fact down another 28% today, not up that seven thousand percent and change. The point if that we must – always – distinguish between nominal prices and real prices. It changes in real pricing which changes the amount of money we've got as traders after all.
ShiftPixy itself started out as what seemed like a very good idea. Of course, it did get rather caught up in fads and fashions, as is true of many an idea that people try out. But given the spread of the gig economy there was at least a chance it could work – or perhaps more accurately, it was worth trying. So, we've the gig economy, people picking up shifts of work here and there. We've also got the restaurant industry which is full of people flitting from job to job. So, why not combine the two ideas and have an app, a service, for gig workers in restaurants?
PIXY would both run the marketplace itself, matching labour with shifts. And also process that back office stuff which is so difficult to get right quickly. Tax registration, making sure social security is paid, all that stuff that accompanies hiring a new labourer. Sounds like an idea of course. What then happened was covid and lockdowns and that, of course, put the kibosh on the restaurant trade, let alone gig working within it. ShiftPixy hasn't recovered from that even if it was a good idea to start with – at very best all momentum has been lost.
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The specific problem ShiftPixy is trying to solve today is keeping that NASDAQ listing. For if you're below the $1 minimum offer price for long enough then you will lose it and be relegated to the OTC markets. The reason why is simply fashion, culture perhaps. The general view is that below a $ then that's a penny stock – which of course it is – and penny stocks is where bad people go to play with investors. So, you can't be on a Big Boy exchange like NASDAQ or the NYSE if the stock price is in pennies.
The solution is to have a reverse stock split – consolidation to Brits. Every 100 shares of PIXY last night is now just the one share today – a 100 for 1 reverse stock split. This should mean that the ShiftPixy price should rise by 10,000%. It hasn't. So, we've a nominal expected price change of 10,000%, an actual price change of 7,225%, the real price fall is the difference between those two. That's a real price fall of 27 to 28% then. And so is the difficulty over PIXY's Schreodinger's Stock Price resolved. By looking at the difference between nominal and real price changes.
