when a publicly traded company consolidates shares this is known as a reverse stock split or sometimes as stock consolidation a stock merge or a share rollback the consolidation has no impact on a company s value 
for example if five million shares are trading at 10 per share a 1 for 5 reverse split would result in one million shares trading at 50 per share reverse stock splits often are viewed negatively since they often are a means of inflating a stock s price without increasing the value of the company 