cerberus, your buddy is wrong. It's not even close to the same thing. A RS does not change the value of the company. For example, If the OS is currently 1 billion shares, then PBLS has a market cap of $20 million based on a share price of $0.02 multiplied by shares outstanding of 1 billon. A RS would simply reduce shares to say, 500 million and the MM's automatically adjust the price to $0.04 so that the market cap remains at $20 million on the date the RS happens.
That is OBVIOUSLY not the case with the current conversion program.
The conversion will reduce the OS but the MM's will not automatically adust the price upwards. The market will do the adjusting. The market is in the process of increasing the price based on the dividend. Once the share count is released, the market will further adjust the share price upward based on the reduction in outstanding shares.
Here's the bottom line. The current conversion program is more like a buyback than a RS. With a buyback, the price per share rises, the OS falls and the market cap rises. With a RS the share price rises but the number of shares falls so the market cap stays the same.
