I hold a position in LGL and just received options/warrants. What should be the theoretical market value?: "Five warrants will entitle their holder to purchase one share of the Company's common stock at an exercise price of $12.50. The warrants will be "European style warrants" and will be exercisable on the earlier of (i) their expiration date, which will be the fifth anniversary of their issuance, and (ii) such date that the 30-day volume weighted average price per share, or VWAP, of the Company's common stock is greater than or equal to $17.50."
It's effectively a european call option, they have quoted options out to 2023 you can use to get an implied volatility and plug that into BS or your favorite model along with the risk free rate and your guess of dividends and a number will pop out. It's not clear from what you wrote how the $17.50 is treated, i.e. do you have to decide to exercise when the stock reaches 17.50 or else the option expires worthless? If so, you'd have to model it as a spread where you'd sold a $17.50 call for $0 since that caps your max profit. If they haven't already they'll trade as a market of their own and then that will be what they're worth, theory or not. However as you get to the point that there are listed options with the same expiration they'll put a no arb bound on the warrant prices.
Fairly straight forward to price an option, but it sounds like it's an issued warrant which can be valued differently than an option Two key factors - will it be listed, quoted, and trading somewhere? Will it be shortable?
I'd say the key question - can you short the stock and how much would that cost? I seem 'em .45 @ .49 on screens, better bid. At current ref (8.89) and assuming borrow of 6%, I'd pay the offer (that's vol of ~25% which is about half of historical realized, using Bloombergs model).