Battery meme stock rides again; price rises despite another capital raise

It’s a formula that only small, speculative companies in a relatively buzzy industry can pull off:

1. Announce good news.

2. Have the stock go up.

3. Sell more shares, diluting existing shareholders and seemingly putting downward pressure on the stock price.

4. Have the stock go up anyway.

For American Battery Technology Co. in particular, this sequence went something like this:

1. Trumpet a $144 million grant from the US Department of Energy for a battery-recycling facility on Wednesday.

2. Stock up 30% by the end of Thursday.

3. Announce the sale of $5 million in shares and warrants to institutional investors on Friday.

4. Shares up as much as 45% in early trading on Monday.

This penny stock was one of the top five US stocks traded by dollar volume as of 8:45 a.m. ET (which was likely related to the closing of this share offering). By 9:30 a.m., its rank had fallen but was still inside the top 50, and more money changed hands trading this in the premarket than Exxon Mobil or Disney, to name a couple high-profile large-cap stocks.

This isn’t American Battery’s first rodeo. The shares rocketed higher during the January 2021 meme-stock mania. Ironically, its all-time high came days before management announced something very similar — a grant from the DOE — during that month. That was many, many capital raises ago...