also think of this stuff!
There are more requirements to uplisting to NASDAQ than just having a 4dollar share price.
NASDAQ listing requirements in a nutshell:
minimum 1.25million public shares outstanding
minimum bid price 4 dollars
minimum shareholders 2200 (or 450 round lot holders)
minimum value of public shares either 45 or 70 million
1 and 2, check. 3 and 4 are the problems requiring more shares here. In order to get 2200 shareholders that would mean 12million÷2200=5454 shares... In order to get to NASDAQ they will either have to round off shareholder lots to achieve round lots or they will have to increase Float to get total investors way up. Now depending on the company type, I would assume that we are required to meet only 45 million in minimum public share equity. That comes with the 4dollar minimum bid, but if we are subject to the higher requirement, that would mean that those 12million shares need to be worth over 5.8dollars.
So that's the reasoning for the higher AS. Sometimes companies need to do some fancy footwork in the shareholder department in order to achieve listing, even if they have the minimum required share price. My assumption is that they will do an odd lot buyback in order to round off shareholders, that's the more common way of doing things and would create a nice pop too!