Taylor Wimpey (TW.) gained a phenomenal 73.01% yesterday, spending a day at the peak of the FTSE 250 after news that the company is proposing a debt-for-equity deal to its lenders. There were concerns earlier in the week that the housebuilder would be either liquidated or forced to hand its money to creditors, with the percentage of its shares outstanding on loan increasing from 6 to 8%, preceded by a large amount of short covering earlier in the year - from 18% in August. Figures had shown that mortgage approvals had dropped 52% year-on-year causing a negative effect on the sector, as did a bearish note from Credit Suisse giving warning of a fire sale of land.
However, juxtaposed with this jump in share price comes a significant amount of short covering as of c.o.business on Tuesday, with supply becoming more available; as Utilisation dropped from 42% to 37% in the space of a day. The percentage of TW's shares outstanding on loan also fell from 8.2% to 8.05% in the same timeframe. On November 25th there were an average of 70M shares traded compared to the six-month average of 30M. Below is the graph of TW's Utilisation (the percentage of supply out on loan) for the past month. However, Merrill Lynch analysts remained negative on the stock, cutting their price objective from 9p to 5p, retaining 'underperform,' so it will be interesting to see the stock lending activity in this company over the coming months.
Barratt (BDEV) and Bovis (BVS) both added 3.4% and 11.1% respectively to their share price. Barratt has seen a large amount of short covering - down from 12.5% in late October to 10.4% now. Utilisation is at 48%. Bovis has also seen short positions being reduced, down from 15% on October 27th, to 11.5% now. Utilisation is at 28%.