Hot stock: Noble Group surges as trader almost erases last week's slump

[SINGAPORE] Noble Group Ltd surged for a second day as the commodity trader headed for its biggest advance in more than six years and almost erased last week's slump.

Noble climbed 23 per cent to 58 Singapore cents as of 3:24 pm local time, bringing its two-day gain to 27 per cent, after the company said Monday it will bring forward second-quarter results by three days to Aug 10 to address "misleading and untruthful information." "The stock is due for a rebound," Nicholas Teo, a strategist at CMC Markets in Singapore said by phone. "Traders who have been shorting the stock are probably getting squeezed after Noble brought forward the release of its earnings. That can be a sign the company has something good to say." The stock is the most shorted on the Straits Times Index, with short interest as a percentage of outstanding shares climbing to 9.7 per cent on July 31, Markit Group Ltd data tracked by Bloomberg show.

Noble plunged 28 per cent last week and has lost more than half its value since mid-February, when a group calling itself Iceberg Research published criticism of the firm's accounting. The company has bought back S$131 million of its shares since June and hired PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP last month to review its practices.

The losses dragged the stock's value to about 0.47 times book value as of July 31, compared with 1.2 times for the Straits Times Index, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Noble said on Monday it's been approached by several parties with financing and investment options.

BLOOMBERG