Amazon.com plans to acquire iRobot for $1.7 billion
Britain's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) approved Amazon.com's (AMZN) buyout of Roomba vacuum maker iRobot Corporation (NASDAQ:IRBT) for $1.7 billion, noting the deal does not spur competition concerns in the U.K. At last check, IRBT is up 20.4% at $50.66.
Shares earlier surged to their highest trading level since December, overcoming pressure form their 200-day moving average, which had been in place since early November. Year-over-year, the stock is up 21.7%.
Short sellers are hitting the exits, with short interest down 31.4% in the last two reporting periods. The 2.98 million shares sold short make up 11% of IRBT's available float, or over one week's worth of pent-up buying power.
The equity's usually quiet options pits are brimming with activity today, with 3,977 calls and 1,057 exchanged so far, which is 16 times the intraday average volume. The most popular contracts are the September 60 and 55 calls.
Options traders have been more bullish than usual, per the stock's 50-day call/put volume ratio of 2.22 over at the International Securities Exchange (ISE), Cboe Options Exchange (CBOE), and NASDAQ OMX PHLX (PHLX), which sits higher than 75% of readings from the past year.