What Can You Do Before and After a Delisting

What Can You Do Before and After a Delisting
2:36
Published on: May 20, 2025 9:00:00 AM
Okay, so your stock is getting delisted. Deep breaths. There might be opportunities in the chaos.

What is Delisting?
Delisting can be either voluntary or involuntary:

  • Voluntary Delisting: Companies may choose to delist to go private, reduce regulatory burdens, or restructure. This often occurs when management believes the company's value isn't accurately reflected in the public markets.

  • Involuntary Delisting: Occurs when a company fails to meet exchange requirements, such as minimum share price or financial reporting standards.

Assess the underlying reasons for delisting to determine potential impacts on your investment.


Here’s your checklist to make the best of a bad (or maybe just surprising) situation:

1. Read the fine print first
When a company announces delisting, you’ll typically get a circular or regulatory notice explaining why. Read it. It’ll tell you:
  • Is the company going private or merging?
  • Is this a financial rescue operation?
  • Will they offer a buyout or cash per share?
  • Will it move to an OTC (over-the-counter) market?
  • If there's a buyout offer, compare the price offered to the stock’s historical value. If it's a lowball, you can reject it or join forces with other shareholders to contest it.
2. Use the delisting as a value check
Delistings are often preceded by trouble: dropping revenue, scandal, or tight liquidity. But sometimes, especially in voluntary delistings, the company might be undervalued.

Look at the company’s fundamentals. If you believe in the long-term vision and it’s just being taken private, you might hold or buy more before it disappears off-exchange, but only if you’re comfortable with a long wait and low liquidity.

3. Use it as a spring-cleaning moment for your portfolio
Sometimes a delisting is a blessing in disguise. 
  • Rebalance your portfolio
  • Shift funds to more stable, diversified investments
  • Reinvest in companies with strong fundamentals

4. Sign up for investor alerts & research tools
Many investors only notice delisting after it happens. Avoid surprises. Sign up for alerts on tools like: SENS, EasyEquities Blogs, Yahoo Finance or Google Alerts.

On EasyEquities, you can access more information after the market closes on the final trading day.

Be Curious, Not Complacent
Stocks delist for all sorts of reasons — not all of them bad. What matters is how you respond, not just what happens. Stay informed, stay flexible, and always treat each shake-up as a chance to get sharper with your money.

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Any opinions, news, research, reports, analyses, prices, or other information contained within this research is provided by an external contributor as general market commentary and does not constitute investment advice for the purposes of the Financial Advisory and Intermediary Services Act, 2002. First World Trader (Pty) Ltd t/a EasyEquities (“EasyEquities”) does not warrant the correctness, accuracy, timeliness, reliability or completeness of any information (i) contained within this research and (ii) received from third party data providers. You must rely solely upon your own judgment in all aspects of your investment and/or trading decisions and all investments and/or trades are made at your own risk. EasyEquities (including any of their employees) will not accept any liability for any direct or indirect loss or damage, including without limitation, any loss of profit, which may arise directly or indirectly from use of or reliance on the market commentary. The content contained within is subject to change at any time without notice

Any opinions, news, research, reports, analyses, prices, or other information contained within this research is provided by an employee of EasyEquities an authorised FSP (FSP no 22588) as general market commentary and does not constitute investment advice for the purposes of the Financial Advisory and Intermediary Services Act, 2002. First World Trader (Pty) Ltd t/a EasyEquities (“EasyEquities”) does not warrant the correctness, accuracy, timeliness, reliability or completeness of any information (i) contained within this research and (ii) received from third party data providers. You must rely solely upon your own judgment in all aspects of your investment and/or trading decisions and all investments and/or trades are made at your own risk. EasyEquities (including any of their employees) will not accept any liability for any direct or indirect loss or damage, including without limitation, any loss of profit, which may arise directly or indirectly from use of or reliance on the market commentary. The content contained within is subject to change at any time without notice.

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