Blue Apron Stock Looks Ripe for Short Squeeze

2022-09-10 04:07:27 By : Ms. lili chen

Blue Apron Holdings Inc (NYSE:APRN) is up 12.1% to trade at $7.52 this afternoon, still enjoying tailwinds after the company yesterday announced it amended a purchase agreement with RJB Partners. The transaction price changed to $5.65 per share for 10 million shares of Class A common stock, with an aggregate purchase price of $56.5 million, and the closing of the private placement moved to Friday, Sept. 30.

The security earlier surged to its highest level since February, building off of yesterday's nearly 20% gain. The 20-day moving average has been guiding the shares higher since early August, containing a handful of pullbacks along the way. In the last three months, APRN has added a whopping 193.6%.

Calls are still outpacing puts today, but options bears are chiming in. So far, 7,913 puts have crossed the tape, which is double the intraday average, compared to 31,000 calls. Most popular is the September 8 call, followed by the 7 call in the same monthly series.

The equity looks ripe for a short squeeze, too. Though short sellers have already started to hit the exits, with short interest down 9.6% in the most recent reporting period, there's plenty of pessimism left to be unwound. This is per the stock's 3.72 million shares sold short, which account for a whopping 38.7% of its available float.

These investors are using the market's volatility to their advantage and scoring triple-digit gains on many of their trades.