Like a roller coaster, after a big rise can come a butterfly-inducing dip.
Swarmer stock is down in early trading on Thursday after two incredible days of gains.
Shares of the drone software technology provider were down 15% in premarket trading at $49.99, while S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average futures were off 0.7% and 0.6%, respectively.
The drop follows some eye-popping trading action. The company sold shares in an initial public offering at $5 on Monday. The stock closed at $31 on Tuesday and $55 on Wednesday, up 1,000% from the IPO price.
More than 34 million shares have exchanged hands, according to Nasdaq. Swarmer only sold three million shares. The average IPO share has changed hands more than 10 times. The extreme volume is a sign that traders are involved, looking for short-term profits.
Traders aren’t as concerned with valuation. Wednesday’s close left Swarmer with a market value of about $675 million, or roughly 2,250 times 2025 sales of just over $300,000.
Price-to-trailing-sales isn’t really a useful metric, though. Swarmer, founded in 2023 amid the chaos of the Ukraine war, is just getting started, looking to apply its technology to other drone platforms.
Its backlog exceeds $30 million, and the company plans to use the $15 million raised in its IPO for growth. The company is using about $700,000 a month, so its total cash balance of roughly $25 million will last for a while.
What Swarmer is ultimately worth is hard to say. Interest in autonomous drone technology is high, and it’s easy to see the potential for a software platform that can connect drones and enable them to operate regardless of counter-drone measures, such as GPS jamming.
To be sure, other companies offer drone operating software, and Swarmer lists large and small defense contractors among its competitors.
There are no Wall Street analysts following the company yet, according to FactSet. That can help eventually. Analysts typically get access to management, which helps them build financial projections.
For now, investors just have to watch the stock and brace for volatility.