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A worker carries a broom past closed stores in the Tanger Outlets downtown in Atlantic City, NJ. Shares of Tangier soared on Thursday.
Angus Mordant / Bloomberg
Tangier Factory Outlet Centers
took a wild ride on Thursday, the latest hot potato broth caught in a short squeeze.
The mall operator has a high amount of short-term interest, currently more than 33% of its shares, according to FactSet. That makes it one of the most shorted stocks along with
GameStop
(30.2%),
Rocket Cos.
(39.7%), and
GoodRx Holdings
(27.6%), according to MarketWatch data.
Shares of Tangier (ticker: SKT) are up 22% Thursday morning to hit its 52-week high before settling down. By mid-afternoon they had completely lost steam and were down 5.4%. The stock is up 38% in the past year, compared to an annual gain of 20% in the
S&P 500.
Shopping centers were among the most suppressed inventories during the pandemic, forced to temporarily close locations and limit the number of shoppers, while also juggling tenants on a tight budget facing the same challenges.
Tangier has been a topic in a Reddit forum called WallStreetBets. A message from Wednesday said, “SKT is about to hit its all-time high since May 2019 and it is the second most short-circuited stock after GME. You know what to do!”
“Let’s detonate this,” the post says. “Help raise awareness of this stock and make it the new GME.”
A spokesman for Tangiers was not immediately available on Thursday.
WSB on Reddit is the forum where stock trading enthusiasts exchange ideas. It is also a big focus of those investigating the run-up inside
GameStop
(GME),
AMC Entertainment Holdings
(AMC), and other stocks described in a trading frenzy a few weeks ago as retail investors chasing professional short sellers.
The average rating of the six analysts publishing research on Tangiers is underweight, the equivalent of a sale. Full-year 2020 sales were down 10% to $ 370 million, according to FactSet.
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