Some bullish options traders on Wall Street are betting Snap‘s troubled stock might bounce back as early as next week.
There have been some big block buys in the options pit, according to trader Jon Najarian, co-founder of Najarian Family Office and a CNBC contributor. The unusual trading activity — “huge,” “massive” buying of August calls —signals that the stock might pop back above $15 sometime this month and maybe as early as next week, Najarian said on CNBC’s “Halftime Report” on Friday.
“A reason to maybe keep an eye on this one,” Najarian said. He added that he would be long these calls for a trade for a week: “If it goes up, obviously I’ll make a lot of money.”
Shares of Snap jumped 4.5 percent Friday. One of the world’s leading advertising companies told CNBC on Friday it would double its spending on Snapchat this year. And Snap also unveiled a new feature to make it easier for advertisers to manage their campaigns, a move that will more closely align the platform with rivals like Facebook, according to a Friday report by TechCrunch.
But Snap shares have fallen nearly 40 percent in the past three months, after the company’s hotly anticipated public offering was followed by disappointing first-quarter financial results. Snapchat has also had to fend off competition from the leaders of the advertising industry, Google and Facebook.
The end of August signals the wind-down of Snap’s lockup period, when insiders and early investors will finally be able to trade their shares on the public market. So far, no insiders have declared major changes to their share holdings with the SEC.
And Snap’s scheduled to release its second-quarter financial results on Aug. 10, when analysts are expecting the company’s sequential growth to pick up, at least in terms of users. Snap has declined to comment to CNBC on the stock price this week, citing a quiet period before the second-quarter results are released.
Snap’s estimated to report about 176.2 million daily active users for its disappearing message app, adding more than 10 million daily active users from last quarter, according to FactSet. That would be a faster pace of growth than the 5 million daily users added in the fourth quarter and the 8 million added in the first quarter.
“I was in it on the IPO and then I sold it,” Najarian said. “With all the pressure that came off, I think this is all kind of behind these guys now and the stock’s ready for that big upside move.”
Source: Tech CNBC
Snapchat shares rebound as traders make a 'huge' bet troubled IPO will rip on earnings