Today’s tickers: KCI, ACN, TM & YZC
KCI – Kinetic Concepts, Inc. – Options on the medical technology company sprang to life this morning on a more than 14.6% move up in the value of its shares to $67.38 the highest shares have traded since 2006. The stock rallied on reports the company is in talks to go private in a leveraged buyout and may be worth around $5 billion excluding debt. Traders populating Kinetic options focused mainly on calls, buying and selling in- and out-of-the-money calls in the July, August and September expiries. Mixed trading patterns observed thus far today contrast with more one-sided open interest patterns in now deep in-the-money July contract call options. Investors who appear to have taken long call positions in June are now holding far more valuable contracts. Open interest patterns in the July $60 and $62.5 strikes, the largest blocks of call open interest on Kinetic Concepts, caught our eye. It looks like traders purchased the majority of the 645 open call positions at the July $62.5 strike during the second half of June for an average premium of $0.19 a-pop. These calls are now more than 21 times as expensive following the sharp rally in the price of the underlying. The July $60 strike call has some 1,700 open positions and it looks as though most of these are long calls purchased in the first week of June at an average premium of $0.68 per contract. In just over four weeks, call buyers have seen the value of their positions sky-rocket up to the current asking price of $6.40 apiece.
ACN – Accenture PLC – Put volume on the global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company jumped today, with more than 45,000 put options having changed hands on the stock by 11:30…
