MEXICO CITY – Grupo Aeromexico stock rose sharply for a third day on Wednesday on speculative buying, analysts said, after plummeting last week on a tender offer that valued the shares near zero in the airline’s effort to emerge from bankruptcy.
The shares rose as much as 58%, or 3.43 pesos per share, with a cumulative increase of nearly 200% this week.
The surge comes after the stock slumped to an historic low of 0.90 pesos last week after the announcement of a public tender offer by an unnamed third party that proposed offering 0.01 peso for each outstanding Aeromexico share.
“It’s speculation, we don’t see anything other than that,” Carlos Hernandez, an analyst at Masari Casa de Bolsa, said of the market appetite for the airline’s stock.
Despite the rally, which has led the stock exchange to repeatedly carry out volatility auctions on Aeromexico’s stock, the shares are still below 4 pesos, the price where they traded before the tender announcement. Volatility auctions halt trading when the stock is fluctuating dramatically and seek to set a new stable price.
Analysts and traders said further details on restructuring plans would likely to determine future market moves.
“The company has to clarify the conditions of the takeover bid and then see how professional investors who determine whether or not it’s convenient to participate in the takeover behave,” said Gustavo Fuentes, an independent market analyst.
Aeromexico said in a statement after close of markets on Wednesday that the third-party firm Sociedad Alinfra submitted a formal request to Mexico’s national banking and securities commission and the country’s stock exchange to carry out the public tender, in line with Aeromexico’s restructuring plans.
(Reporting by Noe Torres and Valentine Hilaire; Additional reporting by Miguel Angel Gutierrez; Editing by Jane Merriman and Cynthia Osterman)
