Today Is the SEC's Deadline on NYSE American's 25-Cent Delisting Floor. Hyperscale Data Just Set a Reverse Split.

by Renée Delacroix · August 14, 2026

Senior Analyst, The MicroCap Herald

Friday, August 14 is the date the Securities and Exchange Commission designated as its deadline to approve or disapprove SR-NYSEAMER-2025-72, a proposed amendment to Section 1003(f)(v) and Section 1009 of the NYSE American Company Guide. In the Commission's own description of the proposal as modified by Amendment No. 3, if a security's closing price per share is less than $0.25 — the filing calls that level the Minimum Trading Price — on any trading day, the exchange shall immediately suspend trading and commence delisting proceedings with respect to that security, and the security would not be eligible to follow the procedures outlined in Section 1009. There is no averaging window and no cure period: a single closing print below the line would be enough. As of Friday morning, no order approving or disapproving the filing had appeared on the Commission's docket.

The path to this date has been unusually contested for a listing-standards filing. NYSE American filed the proposal on December 3, 2025, and notice was published in the Federal Register on December 17. The exchange then submitted three amendments, and on March 17, 2026 the Commission instituted proceedings under Section 19(b)(2)(B) to determine whether to approve or disapprove the rule as modified — a step the SEC takes when a filing raises questions it is not prepared to resolve on the ordinary timetable. In that order the Commission set out commenters' arguments that the exchange had not demonstrated the Minimum Trading Price to be a reliable predictor of sustained financial distress or manipulation risk, that other continued-listing standards receive cure periods, graduated supervision or discretionary review while this proposal offers none, and that the proposal does not provide a stable, objective and predictable trigger. On June 16 the Commission published a notice designating a longer period, extending the 180-day deadline that ran from the December 17 notice by a further sixty days to August 14, 2026.

It matters what the rule would replace, because the current regime is discretionary rather than mechanical. Section 1003(f)(v) of the Company Guide today allows the Exchange to suspend and delist a common stock selling for a substantial period of time at a low price per share, or to determine that a reverse split is the appropriate remedy, weighing pertinent factors. Practice under that discretion is not written into the rule. Counsel summarising the current framework for issuers describe the exchange as routinely providing a courtesy warning to any company whose stock price falls below $1.00 on a 30-trading-day average, and as generally viewing trading below $0.10 as abnormally low, a level at which it can suspend trading immediately and commence delisting proceedings. Those are descriptions of practice rather than rule text. A bright-line $0.25 test with no cure period would convert a judgment call into a trigger.

Hyperscale Data, Inc. (NYSE American: GPUS) is a useful case for reading the arithmetic, and it moved on Thursday. In an announcement dated August 13, the company said the ratio of its reverse split of Class A common stock had been fixed at one-for-five, effective in Delaware on Monday, August 24, with split-adjusted trading beginning on NYSE American on Tuesday, August 25 under new CUSIP 09175M 879. Par value remains $0.001, Computershare Trust Company, N.A. is exchange and transfer agent, and stockholders otherwise entitled to a fractional share will instead receive a cash payment. The ratio is at the outer limit of the one-for-two to one-for-five range stockholders approved at a meeting on April 10, 2026, authority that runs to March 17, 2027.

Hyperscale's Class A shares closed Thursday, August 13 at $0.1128, according to daily price data compiled by StockAnalysis. That is below the $0.25 line the pending rule would draw, and above — but not far above — the level at which the exchange's existing discretionary authority is generally understood to bite. Five times $0.1128 is $0.564. That figure is arithmetic applied to Thursday's pre-split close on a one-for-five basis, not a projection: reverse splits do not create value, and the post-split price is set by the market on the first split-adjusted session, not by the ratio.

The second calculation is the one that requires reading the rule text rather than a summary. The Commission approved SR-NYSEAMER-2024-61 on January 16, 2025, adding new provisions to Section 1003(f) of the Company Guide. Under Section 1003(f)(vi), immediate suspension and delisting procedures commence where a company has effected one or more reverse stock splits over the prior two-year period with a cumulative ratio of 200 shares or more to one. Under Section 1003(f)(vii), the same follows where a company has effected a reverse stock split and the effectuation of that split results in the security falling below any of the requirements of Section 1003. Hyperscale Data effected a one-for-thirty-five reverse split that became effective in Delaware on November 22, 2024, with split-adjusted trading from November 25. Thirty-five multiplied by five is 175. Chained with the one-for-five taking effect on August 24, that is a cumulative ratio of 175 to one, and the November 2024 split does fall inside the two-year lookback measured from that date. But 175 is below the 200-to-one threshold, so subsection (vi) is not engaged. It is a near thing rather than a breach, and the distinction is the whole point: the threshold is cumulative, and the November 2024 split rolls out of the window in late November 2026.

On scale, Hyperscale Data said on August 12 that it expects to report approximately $360 million in total assets as of June 30, equal to roughly $0.62 per outstanding Class A common share, and approximately $110 million in stockholders' equity, or book value of roughly $0.19 to $0.20 per share, based on approximately 581.5 million Class A shares outstanding. Those per-share figures are stated on the pre-split share count. On a post-split basis that count becomes roughly 116 million, and the per-share figures would be five times larger; they are not comparable to the split-adjusted price arithmetic above, and mixing the two bases would be an error. The company said the expected figures are preliminary, unaudited and subject to completion of its financial closing procedures and review, that actual reported results may differ, and that it expects to file its quarterly report for the June quarter within the applicable filing period. The same release describes the business as a data centre at which the company mines digital assets and offers colocation and hosting services, together with Ault Capital Group, which it says manages businesses across financial services, digital assets, industrial services, hospitality, defence technologies and other sectors.

The issuance capacity behind those figures is a live disclosure item. A Form 8-K filed April 17 confirms that Hyperscale Data's authorised Class A common stock increased from 500,000,000 shares to 2,500,000,000, approved by the board on December 19, 2025 and by stockholders on April 10, 2026, with the certificate of amendment effective April 16. The proxy statement for that meeting tied the increase to 310,509,269 shares issuable under existing convertible instruments and to possible future financings. Stockholders at the same meeting — reconvened from March 18 — also approved the conversion of up to 100,000 shares of Series H convertible preferred stock, for a total purchase price of up to $100,000,000, into Class A common stock; the proxy disclosed that on full conversion Ault & Company could beneficially own up to 76.80% of 1,343,453,412 Class A shares. A reverse split reduces outstanding shares; the August 13 announcement addressed par value and the treatment of stock options, warrants and equity incentive plan shares, and did not announce any corresponding reduction in the authorised count. Separately, Hyperscale Data announced on October 22, 2025 that it had regained compliance with the stockholders' equity standards in Sections 1003(a)(ii) and 1003(a)(iii) of the Company Guide, following non-compliance notifications dated December 18, 2024 and March 4, 2025. This article does not assert any present listing deficiency.

The August 14 deadline also lands while the other half of the small-cap listing debate sits frozen. The Commission approved Nasdaq's own new continued-listing standard — a $5 million minimum market value of listed securities, with suspension and delisting after 30 consecutive business days below the line and no automatic stay of suspension during a Hearings Panel review — on July 22, 2026 under File No. SR-NASDAQ-2026-004. One week later, on July 29, Cemtrex, Inc. and the Small Public Company Coalition filed notices of intention to petition for review, which under SEC Rule of Practice 431(e) stayed the approval automatically, without any separate Commission decision. Nasdaq issuers remain subject to the pre-July 22 standards, and there is no fixed deadline for the Commission to resolve the petitions.

The two proceedings are procedurally unrelated but point the same direction: both exchanges have asked for authority to remove very small and very cheap issuers faster and with fewer intermediate steps, and both have drawn objections from the constituency that would be removed. Whichever way Friday's decision goes, companies trading in the teens and twenties of a cent on NYSE American are operating under a standard that could change on short notice. None of the foregoing is investment advice, and this publication takes no view on the merits of any security discussed.