Will Poison Pill Squash American Apparel’s Stock Price?

According to the company’s press release, the poison pill was adopted as a response to:

… reports of rapid accumulations of the Company’s outstanding common stock. The rights plan is designed to limit the ability of any person or group, including Dov Charney, to seize control of the Company without appropriately compensating all American Apparel stockholders. … It does not affect trading by passive investors, as it allows such investors to accumulate as much as 15% of the Company’s common stock and has no impact on a takeover proposal for the entire company acceptable to the holders of a majority of the Company’s shares.

The stockholder rights plan takes effect if any shareholder who already holds 15% or more of the company’s stock tries to accumulate more. Charney owns 27% of American Apparel’s outstanding shares and said on Friday that he was looking to acquire another 10%.

Sensing a possible battle for control, investors piled into American Apparel’s stock in the last half hour of trading on Friday, pushing the share price from $0.77 to close at $0.97, nearly a 30% gain for the day.

American Apparel’s stock has more than doubled since posting a 52-week low of $0.46 on April 8. The stock nearly doubled from a low of $0.51 just last Wednesday. Shares dipped last week when Charney said he would fight to get his job back. Then they rose when the company said it had hired a firm to help it raise cash, and shares really took off at the end of the day Friday as a battle for control looms.

Our guess is that Monday’s opening bid will show another dip following the adoption of the poison pill. The stock’s 52-week range is $0.46 to $2.09, and more than 24 million shares were traded on Friday, about five times more than the daily average.

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