Ann: Piedmont Raises A$159 Million, page-86

In the redomicile announcement there were several reasons listed why this would be good for share holders. One of those reasons was possible inclusion in certain US indexes - the Russell 2000 was specifically called out. So I have been doing a little looking to see what it takes to get into this index.

For those of you who don't know in the US we have the S & P 500 which is for large cap stocks, in December Tesla joined its ranks but part of the qualification process there is 4 consecutive quarters of profitability.

The Russell 2000 is for small cap stocks, the average Market Cap of companies listed on the Russell 2000 is around 2.1B and the median is 638M. Here are the criteria I found for inclusion.

Russell 2000
Entry into Russel 2000
•Must be US company
•Not an OTC Stock
•Must be small cap stock
•Must be over 300M Market Cap
•Must have a share price over $1

All of these boxes are checked for Piedmont. I do not see a "Time Qualification" but that does not mean it does not exist, I just have not found it. I mention this because of the timeline below - just 9 days after we are officially a US company, could it be that someone was doing their homework and timing this perfectly?

https://www.ftserussell.com/resources/russell-reconstitution




Why is this important to you?

Inclusion into an index means that any ETF or funds that are based on the Russell 2000 will have to buy stock in those companies. I mentioned Tesla at the start of this post because when they were included in the S & P their stock price rose steadily for 2 months ( which is how long fund managers had to buy. Here is the Tesla chart - they were included in the S & P on Dec 21, 2020.


It is definitely worth keeping an eye on in the next few months.

GLTAH