Editor’s note: This article was updated on Sept. 10 to correct the name of the company Support.com is merging with.
Sept. 10 marks an important day for shareholders of Support.com (NASDAQ:SPRT). The customer support company has spent months procuring a merger with Greenidge Generation Holdings, a privately held company with holdings in both power generation and blockchain services. In just two days, shareholders will be asked to vote on the deal, placing the power in the hands of those who hold SPRT stock.
Will SPRT Stock Be Seeing Green?
In order for this merger to gain the acceptance it needs, 50% of shareholders must vote yes on the question of whether it should be approved. The official announcement came on March 19 of this year.
To say that SPTR stock has experienced growth since then would be a drastic understatement. The company began the year trading at roughly $2.10 per share. On Aug. 30, it peaked with a share price of $36.39. It’s sunk in the week since then and is currently trading at $23.16 as of this writing. Even so, that still marks a gain of roughly 957% on the year.
It is not a coincidence that this upward growth pattern began on March 19, the day the merger was announced. Since then, with the exception of very minimal declines, the stock has climbed steadily and shareholders with SPRT stock have had no cause to be anything but happy.
Hail Mary Pass or Calculated Play?
Even with all this in mind, some experts have expressed doubt as to the sustainability of SPRT stock’s growth following the merger.
InvestorPlace’s Will Ashworth raised some concerns regarding the merger. As he states:
“The idea of bringing together a customer support business desperate for some value-add for its shareholders with a company that’s not sure if it’s an energy company or a Bitcoin (CCC:BTC-USD) operation is a worthwhile investment seems ludicrous”
Ashworth adds, though, that he “can see the appeal for Support.com management and insiders to want this deal to go through” calling it an “excellent Hail Mary.”
Everything on the Line
It is certainly true that this merger could be considered a Hail Mary in the sense that everything rests on the shoulders of the shareholders of SPTR stock.
However, that term usually applies to plays with little chance of succeeding. In this reverse merger, there is little reason to suspect that SPTR stock will go belly up.
Greenidge Generation may sound like purely an energy company but it seized upon a key opportunity when it filled a market need and opened a data center for blockchain technology services. For a company like Support.com that needed to embrace a changing industry landscape to stay relevant, merging with a company like Greenidge certainly makes sense.
Cryptocurrency enthusiasts seem excited by the prospect of the merger, which would allow Greenidge to go public. It certainly seems that shareholders would be well advised to vote yes on the merger and given SPRT stock’s performance since the deal’s announcement, it seems likely that the help desk company will receive the votes it needs to move forward with this reverse merger.
In two days, everything will be on the line. We’ll be watching.
On the date of publication, Samuel O’Brient did not have (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer, subject to the InvestorPlace.com Publishing Guidelines.
