: Confusion or meme play? Meta Materials stock soars after Facebook’s name change

Facebook Inc.’s corporate name change to Meta landed with a thud for many Thursday, but it may have been good news for one Canadian company.

Meta Materials Inc. MMAT, +4.83%, a Nova Scotia-based material-science company that makes nanocomposites and other advanced engineering materials, saw its U.S.-traded shares soar more than 30% in after-hours trading Thursday, before settling down to an 18% gain in the extended session. That followed a nearly 5% gain in the regular session, after Facebook FB, +1.51% announced its name change.

The company, is should be noted, is completely separate from Facebook/Meta.

While confusion may have played a factor, it may not have been the only one: Meta Materials has recently gained popularity as a meme play with significant short interest.

Even the meme players on Reddit were befuddled. “Is the AH price action real, or are people buying MMAT thinking they are getting Facebook for really cheap?” one commenter wrote late Thursday on the subreddit r/MMAT. “I’d love for the price action to be for real – but have seen this before with zoom where people buy the wrong stock…”

Meta Materials founder and CEO George Palikaras took the opportunity earlier in the day to welcome Facebook “to the metaverse.”

Meta Materials, with a market cap of about $1.2 billion, does have some ties with Facebook, though. In a statement Thursday, the company announced it will hold an online panel to discuss the future of augmented-reality eyewear, with Facebook’s Reality Labs listed as a participant.

Meta (the Facebook one) will start trading under a new ticker symbol, MVRS, starting Dec. 1. The ticker META is already used by the Roundhill Ball Metaverse ETF META, +1.94%, which counts Facebook as its fourth-largest holding.

If the spike was due to a mix-up, then it would hardly be the first time a stock has soared after investors did not do their due diligence before buying. Zoom Technologies Inc., an over-the-counter penny stock, has seen multiple spikes over the past couple of years as investors confused it for Zoom Video Communications Inc. ZM, +1.38%.