RE: Increased shorts27 Jan 2022 19:41
They borrow the shares from existing holders from brokers, unless you have sell order limit placed with your broker they're free to " lend " those shares out.
Marshall Wace could be shorting for any number of reasons, hedge funds are never normally more than 70 % long, so they will always be shorting 20-30 other stocks.
If RMG continues to make a profit in the 300-500 million range on an ongoing basis whilst it continues to streamline and modernize the business the shorts will eventually get burned as they did in September 2020, especially if they pursue the share buy back long-term.
If the price falls too far they will also just step-up the buyback daily rate as they still have circa £165 million in the pot, the BOD knows the fair value of the company. At today's closing price of 435.2 that is 37.9m shares,
Daily volume on RMG is around 2-4 million shares on a normal trading day so it seems that only people selling shares currently is the shorts. Marshall Wace are short circa 8m shares and RMG has the funds in reserve to buy 37.9m shares, they are probably hoping the shorts increase simply so they can buyback even lower and currently RMG have the buying power to burn them them on any given day.
Fundamentally the only problem the company currently has moving forward is controlling the labour costs, 15,000 being of sick during covid resulted in £300 million additional costs. GLS is continuing to grow and as people were saying in 2019 it is probably worth more than the market cap alone, nothing has changed their.
Short-term if the market crashes and takes RMG with it, we may see a repeat of the past, but that will just create another opportunity as it was at the end of 2019 and early 2020.
The fundamentals long-term for RMG are also a lot stronger now than they were in 2020.