Hot stock update: Noble Group jumps by most since '99, erases last week's drop

[SINGAPORE] Noble Group Ltd surged the most in more than 15 years, rising for a second day and erasing last week's 28 per cent slump as the commodity trader brought forward its results announcement.

Noble climbed 28 per cent to 60 Singapore cents at the close, the most since December 1999, bringing its two-day advance to 32 per cent. 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.

The plunge in Noble's shares last week was the biggest drop since the 2008 global financial crisis. The company 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