This is an old playbook. Promoter will gift shares or sell to big fish/institution after an euphoric bull run - Example: Cupid went up 40x between July '14 and Jan '16. Post that suddenly in Jan '17 Elara Opportunities bought a big chunk at above market valuations re-inforcing the view that there was value. It was baffling why Elara would do something like that but they sold pretty much everything within a year. Cupid wasn’t the only one that did this back in '17-'18 bull run. Its been a while and I don’t remember the others.
AVL is so similar. 100x in 2.5 yrs and then a big fish comes in to add credibility to the price. The number of shareholders in this scrip was in 2 digits for most of '20.
We don’t know what is the real acquisition price when a big fish or institution takes a large chunk in an illiquid counter. Incentives simply don’t align that way or maybe I am too skeptical.