Facedrive Stock: What Happened?

In early 2021, Facedrive was a high-flier in Canada. Out of nowhere, the company, which seemed to be in multiple businesses, including ridesharing, carbon credits and a trading platform, hit a high of sixty dollars. It boasted a market capitalization of more than $5-billion.

And then, faster even than it rose, it fell to nearly nothing.

“Whether it’s a meme stock or a nearly failed tech startup isn’t the point,” said Motley Fool’s Vishesh Raisinghani.  “The point is that Facedrive was a trader’s dream come true. Double-digit daily moves and triple-digit weekly moves are precisely the sort of volatility that traders make their money on.”

But traders wouldn’t be holding those dreams for long. On October 5, 2022, now listed at just $0.52, the company announced it would change its name to Steer Technologies. Today it trades under the symbol “STER” on the TSXV. At press time, the stock was changing hands at $0.115.

Then, in May of 2023, a development shed some light on the precipitous fall. It was announced that executives from the company would be banned from serving as directors of any public company and face heavy fines for issuing misleading press releases.

“The company’s valuation ballooned to more than $5-billion on the TSX Venture Exchange in 2021, surpassing Maple Leaf Foods Inc. and CI Financial Corp., despite minimal revenue and recurring losses, Joe Castaldo wrote. “Its stock price has since crashed by 99 per cent and it now trades for pennies.”

“The facts that give rise to the settlement agreements do involve serious misconduct,” The Globe and Mail reported that OSC lawyer Rikin Morzaria said at the hearing.

Steer, meanwhile, soldiers on.

“We are extremely excited to reposition our brand as “STEER”, CEO Suman Pushparajah said at the time of the name change. “We always want our brand to represent: 1) a means to steer the world towards eco-friendliness and social responsibility; 2) the agility and nimbleness necessary to steer us into the future; and 3) the global dynamics of diversity and growth that will require responsible leaders to steer the world through. In business terms, we envision ourselves to be at the cutting edge of steering the mobility industry into this new era of On-Demand and Pay-As-You-Go Subscription services.”

Steer reported its Q2, 2023 results recently, posting an Operating Loss of $3.71-million on revenue of a million dollars.