What do the Shorts expect?They expect obviously for the stock to go down and they will do their best to help it.
But at these levels they need a major :Whoops for the stock to drop very much: If interest rates skrocketed before they paid down a lot of debt, if they got really bad prices for their assets they are trying to sell, if Ripet failed to ship in the 2nd quarter. If WGL lost a large number of customers, if there was a major disruption to owned assets, if their earings were terrible and unexpected, if the new CEO absconded with the company safe... I think all of these are very low probability events.
If the next ER and CC are re-assuring more doubt will be resolved in favour of a long term recovering company balance sheet and the price will move up. When that happens and shorts begin to cover in earnest we can expect a very nice rally towards the proper evaluation which may come by year end or mid next year. Then when the first new dividend increase comes - more upside. So shorts are trying to close it out gradually right now. Happy to be long here.... GL to all. longs.