At its Menlo Park headquarters, California, a sign for Meta, the new company name, can be seen on October 28, 2021.
Meta Materials surged on Thursday night, the same reason Zoom Technologies rallied in 2019, and Signal Advance surged January. It's all about their name.
On Thursday, Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder of Facebook, announced that his company will now be known as Meta. Meta Platforms will now be the official corporate name. The stock will trade starting Dec. 1 under the ticker symbol MVRS.
Meta Materials is not associated with Facebook. According to their website, it's a Canadian material sciences company whose technology can be used to "transparently block a certain color of light or invisibly heat a window in cars."
Investors sometimes don't care or know what they are doing.
Meta Materials shares, which trade under the ticker symbol MMAT on Thursday, surged up to 25% following a 4.8% gain in market hours. The company's value has risen to just over $1.5billion, which is a fraction of what it was before Facebook.
On Thursday, George Palikaras (CEO of Meta Materials) tweeted, "I would love to cordially invite @Facebook into the #metaverse."
Meta Materials' headquarters is in Dartmouth (Nova Scotia), at the far eastern end Canada. It is about 3,800 miles away from Zuckerberg’s Silicon Valley company. According to the website, Palikaras holds a PhD in metamaterials.
Palikaras wrote to CNBC in an email, saying, "We love AR VR and metaverse space, and bring the best metamaterials to enable its commercial success." Both hardware and software innovations will be crucial. In a press release, the company stated that it would be joined by Facebook Reality Labs next week in an online panel discussing the future of Augmented Reality eyewear.
This is not the first time that a company rallied around its name.
Zoom Technologies, a small Chinese wireless communications company, grew to more than 80% in April 2019. Zoom Video Communications, a popular video chat app, was just a few days before the pop.
Clubhouse Media saw a more than twofold increase in its revenue on February 1, but nothing was done at the media distribution, public relations and advertising company. Instead, investors were excited about Clubhouse's social audio app, which was gaining popularity in tech and entertainment circles. Tesla CEO Elon Musk had told his Twitter followers that he would be on Clubhouse at 10 p.m. LA time.
In January, Signal Advance, a small company that trades over-the-counter, saw a 1,100% increase after Musk, who similarly proclaimed he had a different Signal for his followers.
Musk tweeted, "use Signal," referring the encrypted messaging app that is an alternative to Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Apple's iMessage.
Signal needed to make it clear to investors and users that it is not Signal Advance, and is not a for profit company.
