Spirit Airlines is officially a penny stock

A Spirit Airlines plane - Photo: Kevin Carter (Getty Images)
A Spirit Airlines plane - Photo: Kevin Carter (Getty Images)

Spirit Airlines (SAVEQ) is enduring another inevitable embarrassment of its recent bankruptcy declaration: Its stock has been delisted by the New York Stock Exchange. Shares, which are practically at zero, will now trade in the “pink sheet” market outside of the major venues.

“NYSE Regulation reached its decision that the Company is no longer suitable for listing pursuant to NYSE Listed Company Manual Section 802.01D after the Company disclosed in its November 18, 2024 Current Report on Form 8-K that the Company filed a voluntary petition for reorganization under chapter 11 of title 11 of the United States Code (the “Bankruptcy Code”),” Spirit said in a filing Wednesday.

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The new way to buy and sell Spirit shares — trading under the ticker “SAVEQ” instead of the former “SAVE,” — is the category of equities highlighted in the film Wolf of Wall Street. Spirit warns its remaining investors that there is now “a less liquid market for existing and potential holders” of its stock, and because pink sheet listings are so cheap and have such thin markets, they’re extremely volatile.

In the film, Leonardo DiCaprio’s Jordan Belfort demonstrates the potentially predatory nature of selling such investments. He hawks a stock during a cold-call pitch in the scene for 10 cents a share. That’s about where Spirit is trading now.

Spirit expects to emerge from Chapter 11 by March 2025. There’s precedent for delisted airlines to return to the mainstream stock market, though. When United Airlines (UAL) declared bankruptcy in 2002, its shares were also delisted from the New York Stock Exchange (after a bit more runway — it took a year instead of a couple days). After it emerged from bankruptcy in 2005, the company came back to the Nasdaq in 2006.

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