Myhealthchecked (LON: MHC) shares have achieved one of those rare feats - falling while being reported as rising. The recorded, by some, share price rise today of 1,200% and change. That's one of the widely reported tickers that is. The Stock Exchange, on the other hand, has the price falling between Thursday and Friday by about 10%. It's the stock exchange which is right here, not the more general tickers.
The explanation is, of course, that old favourite, a consolidation. Or as Americans know of them, a reverse share consolidation. At one level here there should be no change in the market capitalisation of the company, no change in the value of any individual shareholding. All that has happened is that the number of shares in issue has changed - therefore each share carries a different price even as the aggregate remains the same. In this case we've a 1 for 15 consolidation - where there used to be 15 shares now there is one. So, the price should, mechanically, move up by 1,500%. As we can see it hasn't, it's up by 1,200% and change:
What has happened is that the price did mechanically move by that 1,500%, but then shareholders did some selling and the price declined to only that 1,200% up. Or, as the stock exchange has it:
Myhealthchecked share price from London Stock ExchangeNow, what MHC does, or even why, isn't our point here. This is a learning opportunity. As we can see the stock exchange doesn't show the effects of the consolidation at all. It's not showing that change in nominal price that is, only the change in the real price.
The reason for this is that exchanges alter all the past information about a share when a consolidation (or forward share split for that matter) occurs. So that charts, numbers like dividend rate and so on can be compared over time. The only confusion comes when - sometimes - some parts of the system have updated properly and other parts have not.