Weber Inc. shares saw their biggest daily rally on record volume on Thursday, as investors appeared to be betting the grill maker would become the next meme stock.
Weber WEBR, +27.23% Shares ended the day up 27.2% at a straight $10, by far the strongest percentage gain for a single session. About 20 million shares changed hands during Thursday’s regular session, about 31 times the stock’s average daily volume of about 640,000 last year and also a record high.
Shares are still 45% down from the stock’s closing price of $18.07 on its first day of trading a little over a year ago. They sold for $14 at the company’s IPO last August.
weaver has been mentioned as a potential meme stock with high short interest and a small float, a setup known to target traders congregating on Reddit. Shares have been thrashed this year as Weber’s pandemic sales surge cooled — the company reported an unexpected quarterly loss earlier this month and plans to cut costs, including layoffs and a dividend suspension.
However, Weber shares are short 18.4% of outstanding shares, according to FactSet data have claimed that the percentage is actually much higher.
“Meme stocks, and the long retail shareholders they created, continue to create excitement and confusion in the marketplace by moving stock prices based on momentum rather than fundamentals,” wrote Ihor Dusaniwsky, Managing Director of Predictive analytics at S3, recently. “Meme stocks have not only been profitable for retail long shareholders, but momentum and quant hedge funds have also joined the fray.”
Dusaniwsky summarized the current status of the “meme troika” in a note late Wednesday on Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. BBBY, -19.63%. He dubbed the king of meme stocks a “troika” with “OG meme stock Tesla Inc.” TSLA, -0.37%, sits at the top of the chart, along with GameStop Corp. GME, -6.39% and AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. AMC, -9.69%.