The closing price of FTFL shares did not change yesterday. However, there has been unusual trading activity for the stock. With an average volume of 18,000 shares, it seems that FTFL is not often seen as an attractive trading opportunity.
From a zero value for the previous two days, the trading volume of FTFL suddenly exploded to reach the impressive for the stock number of 184,400 shares traded, from which 91,800, or almost 50%, have been shorted. It looks like the speculative attention of the market expects some news to come out about the company soon, or there were just not enough other chances for quick shorting profits yesterday. The larges part of the trading activity took place at the end of the day, so that the share price climbed back to its usual level of $6.90 for the last three trading sessions.
FutureFuel’s illiquidity is probably due to the fact that the biggest part of the shares represent block holdings, held by insiders, beneficial owners or institutional investors like investment funds.
Some of the recent news around the company provided for some kind of intensified trading activity and most of them concerned the payment of dividends to FTFL shareholders. This Tuesday, a special cash dividend of $0.20 per share on the common stock was declared. The record date will be September 14, 2010 and the payment date is set for September 30, 2010. Although there was no market reaction to that announcement, a day before that on 800 share volume the price had surged from $6.55 to its current value. Previously, in May, again a $0.20 cash dividend was announced, which was paid at the end of June.
Another significant event was the $12.6 million financial assistance award from the U.S. Department of Energy National Energy Technology Laboratory, paid to FutureFuel at the end of July. The funds will be invested in the development of existing assets and for the acquisition of new assets to be used for the production of materials for electric car batteries.
