Actually It’s a $2 Billion Deli

Hometown International Inc., the deli in Paulsboro, New Jersey, that is a $100 million public company for very perplexing reasons, had another good day yesterday. After trading 27,381 shares, total, from the beginning of 2021 until last Thursday, an average of just 353 shares per day, it traded 42,762 shares on Friday — after David Einhorn pointed to its valuation as an example of current market excess — and then 14,989 shares yesterday. It closed at $13.01, up slightly from Friday’s close of $12.99, down slightly from Thursday’s pre-Einhorn close of $13.50.

Last Thursday, the deli was a $100 million public company because you do that calculation by multiplying the number of shares outstanding by the most recent trading price of the stock, even if the stock barely trades; here, the “$100 million” number came from trades worth about $3,900 per day. But now it’s a bit more. Instead of trading a couple of thousand dollars’ worth of stock a day, it traded $212,799 worth of stock yesterday. Instead of getting its very high valuation from a tiny number of trades between, presumably, insiders, it has gotten a lot of public attention while pretty much keeping its valuation.