NEW YORK, June 1, 2026, 08:02 EDT
Volato Group shares more than doubled in U.S. pre-market trading on Monday, the extended session before the regular open, as traders piled into the NYSE American-listed micro-cap before the cash market began. Public.com showed SOAR at $0.49 at 8:00 a.m. ET, up 188.24% from the prior close of $0.17, with pre-market volume at 239.2 million shares.
The move matters because regular trading had not yet started. NYSE American’s early trading session runs from 7:00 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. ET, with the core session from 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., so the first test will come when deeper regular-session liquidity arrives.
Size is part of the story. StockAnalysis listed Volato’s market value at about $5.25 million at Friday’s close and its 52-week range at $0.1178 to $4.36, meaning even a large pre-market jump leaves the stock far below last year’s highs.
There was no fresh Volato announcement in the past 24 hours tying directly to the move. The latest operating update traders had in hand was from May 28, when the company said Vaunt, its private-aviation subscription platform, reached about $3.6 million in annual recurring revenue, or ARR — subscription revenue expected over the next 12 months — up 162% from a year earlier. Matt Liotta, Volato’s co-founder and chief executive, said Vaunt showed demand for a “more flexible, experience-driven approach,” while Chief Operating Officer Mike Prachar pointed to “durable recurring revenue.” Volato, Inc.
The bigger background is the pending M2i Global merger. Volato shareholders approved the deal in May, and the company said the transaction was expected to close by the end of the second quarter, subject to remaining conditions. Under the terms described by Volato, existing M2i shareholders are expected to own about 85% of the combined company, while Volato shareholders are expected to own about 15%, excluding warrant shares. Chief Financial Officer Mark Heinen said the team was focused on “remaining closing steps”; M2i CEO Major General (Ret.) Alberto C. Rosende called critical minerals “strategically important.” Volato, Inc.
A May 11 filing showed the merger proposal received 13.1 million votes for and 158,282 against. Shareholders also approved a name change to M2i Global Inc. and gave the board authority for a reverse stock split, a move that reduces share count and raises the per-share price without changing the company’s total value.
Volato has also tried to clean up its capital structure before the closing. On May 19, it said all shares registered under its at-the-market equity offering had been sold and that all outstanding convertible notes — debt that can convert into stock — had been eliminated. The company said its pro-forma cash balance, including April fundraising, was $5.5 million at March 31, equal to $0.14 a share.
The peer set is not clean. Vaunt still points toward private-aviation names such as Wheels Up and flyExclusive, while the M2i deal would pull Volato toward critical-minerals comparables, including larger U.S. rare-earth producer MP Materials. That split is central to the market’s argument: whether Volato is an aviation-software micro-cap, a minerals supply-chain shell in transition, or both.
M2i has pitched the minerals plan around a critical mineral repository at the Hawthorne Army Depot in Nevada. A May 5 release said M2i and Volato had secured a tenant use agreement to develop and operate the site; Tom Burns, executive director of Nevada’s Governor’s Office of Economic Development, described critical-minerals stockpiling as “vital to our national security.” Volato, Inc.
But the risk side is still blunt. In its March-quarter filing, Volato reported a $2.6 million net loss, $2.0 million of cash and cash equivalents, a working-capital deficit of about $0.3 million and an accumulated deficit of about $103.4 million, and said those matters raised substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern. The company also disclosed a NYSE American continued-listing notice and said it had submitted a plan to regain compliance by Dec. 17, 2026.
That leaves Monday’s open doing a lot of work. If the pre-market price holds after 9:30 a.m., the rally may force a fresh read on the merger trade. If liquidity fades, the move could look more like a low-priced stock squeeze than a reset of Volato’s fundamentals.
