Your post puts some things into perspective. 800 mill or 1.75 bill - the difference in what PBLS needs to make to hold the current share price is a million dollars. Take a look at SLJB which has become the "Devil investors know" which is trading higher than PBLS, "The devil you don't." The difference is there's more uncertainty with PBLS (though I wouldn't be holding what I have and continuing to do so if I didn't think it was worse the risk).
If PBLS were to tell us they have 1.75 bill outstanding shares, great, uncertainty gone. Would investors feel misled? Certainly. Would that mean the company lacks some integrity. Yes. Would the PPS go up? Perhaps - after all the squawking about being misled, in the end, some of the uncertainty would be gone. Uncertainty is the kiss of death for any investment, even more so than bad news.