Why do you think it's harder for the dollar amount of the price per share to go up when it's higher? Maybe 30 years ago, when traders where on the floor, and all stocks traded between so many dollars. These days stocks go to hundreds of dollars a share, some a thousand... Sure there are psychological roadblocks here and there, 10$, 20$... but it's the same roadblock as 1$ or 2$.
In a better exchange, with a higher PPS, we will have more money flowing into and out of the stock. Liquidity helps everyone trade, big or small.
To take it even further, I see discussion on 1:15 - 1:40. Generally people are wanting closer to 15, but seem resigned to 30-40. If one truly believes the stock split has no impact, as I feel, then there is no "good or bad" when it comes to the ratio.
Those numbers just represent the mathematical endpoints of the range of conversion which will be needed to fit the companies financials into a predetermined size for the higher markets. It's all going to be determined by the current PPS at the time of the application.
Everything I read says we need 4$ Bid to get on the Nasdaq, so for this to happen, we need the stock price to be way above that so there's no risk of the bid falling through during the time frame needed. So Just go the 40 and do a forward split later if the prices winds up in a range that doesn't' seem as favorable.
And that's really what this move is about...move up the price to be more "Favorable" to deeper pocketed investors. They don't like the "penny stocks" (Stocks that are trading for pennies...). They like stocks that are trading for dollars, regardless of the market cap.
As for news coming sooner to prevent a "worse" split, again personally I don't think there is a better or worse split... a splits a split, it's just a math conversion and it will be done to solve a mathematical problem with the stocks price, I'm hoping for the 40 because I don't see any problem with that and I'd love to see this stock trade at 7-8$. Plenty of room above the 4$ bid, and plenty of room to grow before reaching the first psych barrier of 10$.
Remember as well what moves the stock price. Acquisitions and Revenue as we've seen. If the split is before the MDE closure, and/or the 10K, we should see a solid lift in the pennies. If it the split happens and then news comes out, we should see that exact same % rise from the post split price.
There's probably a difference in rise, on OTC vs Big boards for these events though. My guess would be we see bigger rise on the bigger boards, as the company would be more "Vetted" after an uplisting and a greater number of people/institutions would feel more comfortable about investing, even smaller amounts into the stock.
I think there would be a HUGE difference in making "ihubs top ten" message board then there is in having "cramer" mention us one single time.