What Is Going On With Academy Sports & Outdoors (ASO) Stock?

Academy Sports & Outdoors Inc ASO shares jumped nearly 13.9% in the regular and after-hours trading on Monday.

What Happened: There was no immediate trigger for the escalation in the share prices but the company attracted high social media interest. Late Monday, Academy Sports was at the no. 2 spot on the Stocktwits list of trending triggers.

On r/WallStreetBets — the Reddit forum best known for the short squeeze in stocks like GameStop Corp GME and AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. AMC — Academy Sports was the fourth most discussed stock with 766 mentions, according to data compiled by SwaggyStocks. 

A post on the forum posted by u/Velociraptorsss claimed that ASO is “fundamentally undervalued.” 

“The stock has been shorted from the start because I believe it was just lumped into the typical brick & mortar category and will just assumed would bleed out due to online shopping,” wrote the poster. 

Why It Matters: Academy Sports attracted a 35.34% short interest and was among the most shorted stocks at press time, as per HighShortInterest.com data. 

The sporting goods and outdoors retailer released its fourth-quarter results on Mar. 30. Net sales rose 16.6% to $1.6 billion in the fourth quarter on a YoY basis. 

Q4 Non-GAAP EPS was $1.09 which was more than double that of analyst estimates of 52 cents per share.

Price Action: Academy Sports shares closed nearly 9.2% higher at $31.70 and rose another 4.73% to $33.20 in the after-hours session on Monday.