The Audio Pixels Holdings Ltd (ASX: AKP) share price is having a stellar day today. Audio Pixels shares are up 8.23% to $29.20 a share at the time of writing after closing at $27.15 yesterday and opening at $27 this morning.
This latest move caps off what has been a wild ride for this company over 2021 so far. Audio Pixels is up more than 16% year to date, and up 23% since 1 February. But it's also still down from the 52-week high of $31.85 that the company saw in October last year.
One could almost say that, true to form, the Audio Pixels share price resembles a sound wave. So who is Audio Pixels? And why is the Audio Pixels share price on fire today?
Audio-who?
If you're wondering if Audio Pixels is a sound or camera company, the answer is the former. The company was founded in 2000 and has been listed on the ASX since 2004. It also has a secondary listing on the US over the counter (OTC) markets under the ticker symbol ADPXY under an American Depositary Receipt (ADR) structure.
Audio Pixels is attempting to revolutionise sound speaker systems. It is aiming to do this through 'a new generation' of speaker technology that uses micro-electromechanical structures rather than conventional speaker design. This, the company hopes, will result in speakers that are better in quality, while being as thin as one millimetre. According to Audio Pixels, the company holds several patents in this field. It hopes to sell and license this technology to manufacturers of speakers and consumer electronics once mass production has been achieved.
Saying that, things haven't been 'coming up Milhouse' for Audio Pixels in recent times. The company delivered its annual report for shareholders earlier this month, reporting that revenues for the 2020 calendar year came in at $191,434, which was down substantially (almost 30%) from the $272,520 revenue figure from 2019. That lead to a net loss before tax of $12.1 million for the year, also up substantially from 2019's net loss of $6.23 million.
Why is the Audio Pixels share price rising today?
Even though the Audio Pixels share price is having a top day today, it is unclear exactly why. There has been no major news or official announcements out of the company since 9 March. And that was just a routine Appendix amendment notice.
The company did issue a notice on 8 March, in which it advised investors that a shipment of packaged chips that was due to arrive in late February was late, and would arrive in early March instead. But the market has already priced this in, so we can probably discount this for today's share price moves.
What's perhaps even stranger is that the market as a whole is having a day in the red. At the time of writing, the S&P/ASX 200 Index (ASX: XJO) is down 0.4%. Tech shares are being hammered even harder today as well, so you'd think all of the conditions that might influence Audio Pixels shares would be going against it.
ASX data does show that trading volume is significantly above the 5-day average for this company, so perhaps we are seeing a large institutional investor pick up a big tranche of shares today. Or perhaps someone just knows something we don't. Either way, shareholders would be very pleased with today's moves.
At the current Audio Pixels share price, the company has a market capitalisation of $838 million
