Investing

Midday Meme Stock Report for 9/28: Camber Energy, Cellect Biotech, Clean Energy, SmileDirectClub

Paul Ausick

Published: September 28, 2021 1:28 pm

In the noon hour Tuesday, the S&P 500 traded down about 1.8%, the Nasdaq Composite was down about 2.4% and the Dow Jones industrials were down about 1.4%. The day’s big losers, so far, were tech and communications stocks. Twitter, Facebook and Google were all trading down by at least 3.5%, while the biggest tech losers are Applied Materials, Teradyne and KLA-Tencor, having dropped between 4.5% and 6.5%.

Rising yields on 10-year Treasuries (1.522% at last look, up a quarter-point in just over five days), debt ceiling worries and the end of the quarter were concerns. And lest we forget, stocks are expensive.

Meme stocks were not weathering Tuesday’s sell-off well either. Only one meme stock was in the green at noon Tuesday. Camber Energy Inc. (NYSEAMERICAN: CEI) set a new 52-week high earlier in the morning and traded up by more than 10% in the noon hour. At its peak, the stock was more than 25% higher than Monday’s closing price. That is on no news and probably can be attributed to two things. First, a short squeeze that has seen the stock rise by 91% over the past five trading days.

Second, it’s an oil company, and the best performing sector all week has been energy, and even though Camber Energy produced just 2,200 barrels of oil equivalent in the September quarter of last year. The company has not filed a 10-K quarterly report or a 10-K annual report since that filing last December.

In February, the company agreed to a complicated merger with Viking Energy, after which Viking will survive as a wholly owned subsidiary of Camber. When Viking filed its June 2021 quarterly report, the company said it had nearly $96 million in total long-term debt, a working capital deficiency of $55 million, and unrestricted cash of about $2.25 million. Viking reported total proved, developed oil and natural gas reserves of 12.48 million barrels of oil equivalent as of the end of last December. The company produced nearly 1.5 million barrels of oil equivalent per day last year.

The stock’s 52-week range is $2.76 to $3.44, and its daily average trading volume is around 79.5 million shares. More than 530 million had traded so far Tuesday. In case you were wondering, Camber Energy’s share price has virtually nothing to do with its or Viking Energy’s oil production.

Every other meme stock we follow was trading in the red, with Cellect Biotechnology Ltd. (NASDAQ: APOP) down by 13% on no news to around $18.65. The stock’s 52-week range is $6.60 to $35.52, and the average daily trading volume is just 600,000 shares. Less than half that total had traded so far on the day.

Clean Energy Fuels Inc. (NASDAQ: CLNE), which traded up more than 13% on Monday, traded at $8.52, down more than 8% in the noon hour Tuesday. The stock’s 52-week trading range is $2.39 to $19.79. The average daily volume is around 6.5 million shares, and 5.7 million have changed hands so far.

SmileDirectClub Inc. (NASDAQ: SDC) traded down more than 8% Tuesday, at $5.45 in a 52-week range of $4.63 to $16.08. The average daily trading volume is 13.5 million shares, and nearly 17 million had traded.

The major indexes dropped even more as we were preparing this report, with the Dow off about 1.6%, the S&P 500 down more than 2% and the Nasdaq Composite down nearly 2.8%.