LiveXLive Shares Shot Up 65%. Even the CFO Isn't Sure Why

(Bloomberg) -- Shares of LiveXLive Media Inc., a live-music streaming service, have been moving to their own beat the past 24 hours or so. After shooting higher by 65 percent in the final minutes of regular trading Thursday, the stock continued to climb above $12 in pre-market trading only to plummet below yesterday’s close and chill out below $6 a share.

LiveXLive Chief Financial Officer Michael Zemetra said in an interview that a few events this week could have built positive sentiment, but even he said he wasn’t entirely certain. On Tuesday, the company gave a presentation at the Needham Emerging Technology Conference. LiveXLive is streaming three music festivals this week, including the Electric Daisy Carnival mega-rave in Las Vegas. The company is ringing today’s closing bell at Nasdaq in New York.

“We’re a new stock, and maybe people are just sort of learning about it,” said Zemetra, who became CFO last month. LiveXLive started trading under the ticker LIVX in November, priced a 5.46 million share offering in December, then uplisted to Nasdaq in February. “I’d love perspective, because I’m getting lots of questions,” he said.

He’s right that people are quickly learning about the stock. Last Friday, only 2,264 shares of Beverly Hills, California-based LiveXLive traded, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. This was a small amount of activity for the company, but not abnormal. Over the last 180 days, an average of 12,484 shares of LiveXLive traded each day. This Friday, more than 1.34 million LiveXLive shares traded as of 2 p.m. in New York.

Zemetra also pointed to the small fraction of LiveXLive shares that float, which can lead to sharp and quick changes in price. Only 26% of LiveXLive shares are available to publicly trade, according to Bloomberg data. Boxlight, which is a low-float education technology company, also had an unexplained spike earlier this month.

The one analyst who covers the company, Ronald Josey of JMP Securities, declined to comment on the move and said he would have to figure it out. Josey rates LiveXLive the equivalent of "buy," with a target price of $5.

To contact the reporter on this story: Austin Weinstein in New York at aweinstein18@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Courtney Dentch at cdentch1@bloomberg.net, Jeremy R. Cooke

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