Splitting Pennies & Silly Shares

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Now, listen closely, because grown-ups and their stock market games are often quite absurd. Trying to guess which company will chop its share price in two (or four, or ten!) is a bit like trying to predict which boil on a particularly grumpy toad will burst first. It gives you a splitting headache, naturally.

They call it a ‘stock split’, you see, and it sounds terribly important. But really, it’s just a bit of financial trickery. Like rearranging the sweets in a jar – you still have the same amount, but it looks bigger. Investors, bless their cotton socks, get all giddy about it. They imagine it’s a sign of booming business, or that the company is suddenly being generous. It’s usually neither, I assure you.

Let’s have a look at three companies, each with shares costing more than a decent second-hand motorcar: Booking Holdings (BKNG 1.02%), NVR (NVR 1.51%), and Seaboard (SEB +0.90%). They’re all rather pricey, and therefore potential candidates for this silly share-splitting game. But only one of them, I suspect, is even thinking about it. The others? Oh, they’re far too clever for that.

1. Booking Holdings

Booking Holdings, the chaps behind Priceline and Kayak, are the most likely to succumb to the splitting urge. They’ve done it before, you see – a reverse split, ages ago, when their shares were worth less than a mouldy biscuit. They were a penny stock, bobbing about in the frothy mess of the dot-com bubble.

They’re also the most…visible, shall we say. Most of us have stumbled across their websites when trying to escape for a holiday. That makes them appealing to the little people – the ones who don’t have a spare half-million lying around for a ’round lot’ of shares. Though, these days, you can buy bits and pieces, fractions of shares if your broker allows. Still, a split makes it look cheaper, and that’s what counts, doesn’t it?

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2. NVR

NVR? Now, they’re a different kettle of fish. NVR might as well stand for ‘Never, Ever, Very Rarely’ when it comes to splitting shares. Their shares cost more than a small castle! Seven thousand, seven hundred and sixty-two dollars each, can you believe it? The second most expensive on the exchange. Only Berkshire Hathaway is pricier, but they have a cheaper ‘B’ share for those of us who aren’t quite royalty.

NVR builds houses, and they’re frightfully good at it. They’re also frightfully good at keeping their money. They don’t believe in dividends, or splitting shares. They hoard it like dragons, those NVR chaps. And they’re unlikely to change their ways anytime soon.

3. Seaboard

Finally, we have Seaboard. They do a bit of everything – pork, grain, shipping. A rather messy business, really. One year they’re swimming in profits, the next they’re scraping the bottom of the barrel. A feast-or-famine operation, and that makes them a bit of a wild card.

They’ve had some good years, and some dreadful ones. If they split their shares after a booming year, only to have things go wrong the next, those shares could shrink faster than a shrinking violet. They’re not a ‘growth stock’, you see, not a company that’s steadily climbing upwards. They’re a bit of a gamble, and I suspect they prefer it that way.

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2026-01-24 19:12