What's happening: Shares of energy services company Ameresco (NYSE: AMRC) jumped almost 10% today, but have settled down a bit. As of this writing, shares are up closer to 7%.
Why it's happening: Ameresco reported earnings yesterday morning, and held its earnings call before the market opened, so it's a bit strange for the stock to move so much a full day after earnings news. However, there are a couple of things that we should consider.
To start, the stock moved down more than 3% yesterday, even with a relatively good earnings report, and a full-year guidance that would require pretty robust sales and earnings versus the first half of the year.
Second, Ameresco share trading volume is typically very low, with less than 60,000 shares trading hands each day. At recent stock prices, that's only about $413,000 in shares trading every day. This is heavily influenced by the fact that CEO George Sakellaris owns more than two-thirds of the company's shares, significantly reducing the number of shares actually available for trading from day to day.
Combined, the low trading volume, Sakellaris' huge ownership, and a market capitalization of only $321 million at the current market price mean that it doesn't take a lot of buying activity to move the price up.
Including yesterday's sell-off, the stock is up about 4% since reporting earnings, but is still 60% below its high from early 2011:
It's a nice bump, but a reminder that the stock and business still has a ways to go to get where investors expected it would when it went public about five years ago.
