Today’s tickers: GMCR, PBI & FMCN
GMCR - Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Inc. – Shares in Green Mountain Coffee Roasters fell as much as 8.95% this morning to a fresh all-time low of $21.06 after grocery chain operator, Kroger Co., said it plans to sell private label coffee pods for Green Mountain’s Keurig single-cup brewing machine. GMCR’s patent on the K-cups expires in September. Green Mountain’s shares have lost 80.0% of their value since September 2011, when the stock touched an all-time high of $115.98. Options traders expecting shares in GMCR to extend losses snapped up puts on the Waterbury, Vermont-based coffee company. Short-term bearish bets are building in the June $21 strike put where some 2,500 lots were purchased for an average premium of $0.53 apiece. Strategists positioning for a more severe pullback in the price of the underlying picked up roughly 2,000 puts at the July $17 strike for an average premium of $0.66 each. Traders long the $17 strike put stand prepared to profit at expiration next month should shares in Green Mountain tumble 22.4% from today’s low of $22.06 to breach the average breakeven price of $16.34. Not all of the action in GMCR options is bearish today; some strategists appear to be buying out-of-the-money calls that could pay off if shares in GMCR stage a near-term rebound.
PBI - Pitney Bowes, Inc. – Heavier than usual options activity on Pitney Bowes pushed the provider of end-to-end mail stream solutions onto our ‘hot by options volume’ market scanner this morning, with the day’s volume up near 17,000 lots versus the stock’s average daily volume over the past 90 days of 6,713 contracts. Shares in PBI are currently down 1.0% to stand at $14.14 in early-afternoon trading. Almost all of the volume is in the July $13 strike put where more than 16,600 contracts changed hands against open interest of 4,205 contracts. It looks like most of the puts were sold for…
