The thing to remember about any share split is that it is revenue-neutral for everyone involved.  There is no money changing hands.  If a person owned 500 shares of $1 stock and it went through a reverse 5-1 split, they would simply have 100 shares of $5 stock afterwards.  In each case they could sell it for $500.  Traditional splits help keep the share price down which is nice in some ways because anyone can go buy a round number of shares....say 100 or 1000.  Reverse splits are required to meet the requirements of the stock exchange.  They will delist a stock trading for pennys.