Technology

Meta Materials Earnings Preview

Paul Ausick

Published: August 12, 2021 5:04 am

While writing our previews for earnings releases due out Thursday afternoon, specialty materials and photonics company Meta Materials Inc. (NASDAQ: MMAT) announced that it would be reporting earnings Thursday afternoon. Because Meta didn’t make the first story covering earnings reports due from Airbnb, ContextLogic, Disney, Seer and SoFi, Meta gets a story all its own.

Since coming public in a June 28 reverse merger with Torchlight Energy, Meta (a Canada-based company known as Metamaterial before the deal), the share price has plunged by 56%. The big attraction of the stock, at least prior to the merger, was a promised special dividend from Torchlight’s sale of assets to unspecified buyers — who remain unspecified.

The company’s Nanoweb material is reportedly going to be used in Samsung’s Galaxy Fold 3 phone.

The company has attracted no analyst interest, hence no estimates for either revenues or earnings (more likely losses) per share. Likewise, no price targets or trend estimates. This stock is a blank slate, except among Reddit investors, who also mention the stock far less often than they did a month ago.

Last week, Meta acquired another Canadian firm, Nanotech Security, for around  $72 million. Nanotech provides specialty materials to combat counterfeiting.

Following a reverse stock split just ahead of the June merger, Meta stock was valued at $4.95 a share. The stock traded at around $3.53 in the early afternoon on Wednesday. The 52-week range (most of it as Torchlight) is $0.42 to $21.76. The average daily trading volume on the shares is $23.4 million, and about 6.5 million shares had traded thus far on the day.