Why MicroVision Shares Shot Up 15% Today

Shares of MicroVision Inc. MVIS, an automotive lidar and micro-display technology company, surged over 15% in the extended trading session on Wednesday.

What Happened: MicroVision on Wednesday reported better-than-expected results for the second quarter.

The company’s second-quarter revenue was $746,000, up 30.4% from $572,000 in the year-ago quarter. On average, analysts expected revenue of $700,000 for the quarter.

Loss per share widened to $0.09 from $0.02 in the same quarter in 2020. However, the adjusted loss of $0.04 per share was narrower than the Street expectation for loss per share of $0.05.

Sumit Sharma, CEO of MicroVision, said he expects that the company’s Long Rane Lidar (LRL) product family will be available for sale beginning in the fourth quarter, although in small quantities.

MicroVision shares closed 2% lower in Wednesday’s regular trading session at $12.22, but gained 15.6% in the after-hours session to $14.12.

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Why It Matters: MicroVision is a favorite Reddit stock and was the tenth-most discussed stock on Reddit’s r/WallStreetBets forum as of Wednesday night.

The forum has 10.7 million members and is best known for driving the rally in GameStop Corp. GME and other heavily shorted stocks earlier this year.

MicroVision joined the Russell 2000 Index in late June. The company’s year-to-date returns are 131.8%.

About 18.9% of MicroVision’s total float is held short, according to the latest data from Yahoo! Finance. The high percentage of total shares held short makes Microvision an ideal candidate for another short squeeze.

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Photo: Courtesy of MicroVision