RE:Is SGY preparing to issue more common shares?RetailRube wrote: Did anyone else notice the strange change in short positions? For several months up to March 15th reporting, shorts were quite small. Then in the March 31st report, they shot up to about 4 million shares. The stock closed on Monday March 15th at 67 cents. By Thursday March 18th it dropped to 62 cents, and has mostly been there ever since. So somebody shorted the stock when it was about where it is today. Why do that when the stock is so cheap?
Furthermore, the company announced on March 25th that their asset sale closed successfully and the debt was paid down as promised. The stock traded at 63 cents the day before and 62 cents the day after the announcement. Nothing happened in spite of some risk being taken off the table.
It looks a lot like "Market Management", during which an investment banking firm is allowed to buy and sell the shares to hold the price at a specific level while a common stock issuance is placed with investors. They do the selling with short sales, then close their short position when it is all over by using the "Over-Allotment" shares they have an option on. But I thought the prospectus had to be dropped first, before they could do market management.
Or maybe it's something like an old biotech company I once owned shares in did, where they held the price from going up so that an unnanounced private placement could complete without the price discount they gave the private investor getting too high. I recall there is a provision in either the CBCA or Securities Acts which says the the Board must get the existing shareholders to vote on the share issue price if the discount to current market price exceeds 20% (25%?).
So maybe SGY is about to announce a few hundred million share issue at, say, 50 cents. Then use the proceeds to further pay down the debt. Maybe, like the asset sale, the bankers also asked for an equity issue.
All that might explain why the stock price has been oscillating from 59-62 cents for weeks. It does not feel freely-traded to me.