That the stock market is an efficient mechanism in allocating capital to the right businesses is a myth.
For one, the stock price of a company has no direct bearing on its capital. Only at IPO time or when a company is raising additional capital is the stock price relevant for the capital. E.g. Google's stock price has increased 15x since their IPO, but that has had no effect on their capital. Any other time besides the IPO and when raising additional capital, it is just money changing hands between stockholders, the company doesn't see any of that. Of course, the initial investors often only invest in the capital with the understanding that they will be able to easily sell their shares later. And there are some secondary concerns: employees might have stock or stock options, stockholders can influence the board and hence management, and too low a stock price might engender a hostile take-over.
Secondly, the market is frequently very wrong about pricing stocks. It was happily 'allocating capital' to internet stocks during the dot-com bubble, to financial stocks up to 2008,... A metaphor created by Benjamin Graham, and often repeated by Warren Buffett, is that of Mr. Market [1]: a manic-depressive fellow who has periods when he pays way too much for stocks at certain points and sells stocks at way too low prices at others.
That said, it mostly works. To a company it doesn't really matter all that much that the stock market undervalues your stock by 20-30% or more at some times (a good opportunity for share buybacks!), and overvalues it at other times (a good time to raise additional capital, or use your stock for takeover bids of undervalued companies). Of course, companies often do exactly the opposite: share buybacks when their stock is overvalued and takeovers overvalued companies when their own stock is undervalued...
> the stock price of a company has no direct bearing on its capital. Only at IPO time or when a company is raising additional capital is the stock price relevant for the capital. E.g. Google's stock price has increased 15x since their IPO, but that has had no effect on their capital. Any other time besides the IPO and when raising additional capital, it is just money changing hands between stockholders, the company doesn't see any of that.
But all the capital decisions are in the context of the stock price. If an outside group looks at investing, that will be in terms of current shares; if the company gets bought by another or does a merger, that transaction will be determined by the current share price.
> Secondly, the market is frequently very wrong about pricing stocks. It was happily 'allocating capital' to internet stocks during the dot-com bubble, to financial stocks up to 2008
Some of those internet stocks were worth far more than even their inflated valuations at the time (of course, many were worthless). The market price is always going to be a best-guess consensus estimate, sure, but a lot of these things are just inherently hard to figure out how much they're actually worth.
No, the decision is in the context of the market capitalization, not the stock price. If $10M company has a share price of $50/share, then it has 200,000 shares outstanding. If it has a price of $100/share, then it has 100,000 shares outstanding. A buyout, merger or acquisition is based on the total value of the company, not based on the smallest unit of ownership in that company.
And market cap alone is misleading without considering debt as well. But all that is technical nitpicking. The point is that the stock price is a measure that directly feeds into the overall value of the company that potential buyers etc. will consider.
For one, the stock price of a company has no direct bearing on its capital. Only at IPO time or when a company is raising additional capital is the stock price relevant for the capital. E.g. Google's stock price has increased 15x since their IPO, but that has had no effect on their capital. Any other time besides the IPO and when raising additional capital, it is just money changing hands between stockholders, the company doesn't see any of that. Of course, the initial investors often only invest in the capital with the understanding that they will be able to easily sell their shares later. And there are some secondary concerns: employees might have stock or stock options, stockholders can influence the board and hence management, and too low a stock price might engender a hostile take-over.
Secondly, the market is frequently very wrong about pricing stocks. It was happily 'allocating capital' to internet stocks during the dot-com bubble, to financial stocks up to 2008,... A metaphor created by Benjamin Graham, and often repeated by Warren Buffett, is that of Mr. Market [1]: a manic-depressive fellow who has periods when he pays way too much for stocks at certain points and sells stocks at way too low prices at others.
That said, it mostly works. To a company it doesn't really matter all that much that the stock market undervalues your stock by 20-30% or more at some times (a good opportunity for share buybacks!), and overvalues it at other times (a good time to raise additional capital, or use your stock for takeover bids of undervalued companies). Of course, companies often do exactly the opposite: share buybacks when their stock is overvalued and takeovers overvalued companies when their own stock is undervalued...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Market