Investing

Meme Stock Movers for 10/5: AMC, ContextLogic, Lordstown Motors, Meta Materials 

Paul Ausick

Published: October 5, 2021 9:11 am

All three major indexes closed down on Monday, led by mega-cap stocks in the tech and communications services sectors. Facebook, for example, dropped nearly 5% as the company struggled to recover from an outage at its top websites. Market futures traded up about half a point in Tuesday’s premarket. Bitcoin-mining stocks were moving higher Tuesday morning, as Bitcoin traded close to $50,000.

Meme stocks closed mostly lower on Monday and, bitcoin miners aside, the premarket’s leading loser Tuesday morning was Lordstown Motors  Group Inc. (NASDAQ: RIDE). The stock closed down more than 10% on Monday and traded down another 8.7% Tuesday morning. After markets closed Monday, Morgan Stanley auto industry analyst Adam Jonas cut his rating on Lordstown from Hold to Sell and dropped his price target on the stock from $8 to $2. Unlike many observers who saw the sale of Lordstown’s Ohio plant to Foxconn as a positive, Jonas believes the EV maker realized just 20% of the plant’s value.

AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. (NYSE: AMC) slipped by 4.4% on Monday and traded up by less than 1% in Tuesday’s premarket session. The decline came despite a weekend audience of nearly 4 million worldwide, the highest total since the pandemic forced theaters to close their doors in 2020. More than 2.4 million Americans went to see a movie at an AMC theatre over the weekend. From an early June high of more than $72, shares closed Monday at just over half that price.

ContextLogic Inc. (NASDAQ: WISH) dumped about 9.4% on Monday after the stock was downgraded from Perform to Underperform at Oppenheimer. The stock’s price target was maintained at $4. Oppenheimer said, “the company is facing a perfect storm of negative challenges heading into 4Q.” In particular, the company faces a 393% increase in shipping costs. Combined with rising advertising costs and a drop of nearly a third in app downloads, ContextLogic faces an uncertain quarter and perhaps longer-term future.

Meta Materials Inc. (NASDAQ: MMAT) fell more than 8.5% on Monday and traded up less than 1% in Tuesday’s premarket. George Palikaras, Meta’s CEO, and his wife, Nadine Geddes, filed a Form 13D with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday disclosing the acquisition of more than 32 million shares each of Meta stock personally and another 22.98 million by a company named Lamda Guard, of which both are directors. The acquisition consisted of an exchange of previously owned Meta shares and warrants for shares and warrants of Meta’s common stock.

Following the transaction, Palikaras and Geddes together own nearly 65 million of Meta’s outstanding shares, or about 22.8% of the company, and Lamda Guard owns 8.2% of the outstanding shares.