Tattoo Removal Company Soliton Recoups Losses After Short Report

(Bloomberg) -- Soliton Inc., a company that hopes to get a new device approved for removing tattoos before the end of the year, is recovering lost ground after a short report sank shares to a record drop on Thursday.

Shares rallied as much as 19% Friday before halving those gains after the company told investors that it expected feedback from the Food and Drug Administration on its Rapid Acoustic Pulse shockwave device before the end of May. The company was responding to an anonymous short report posted on Seeking Alpha on Thursday.

The stock had more than doubled from its $5 a share initial public offering in February before Thursday’s report. Its shares traded as high as $8.56 intraday Friday after closing at $7.22 on Thursday. Bearish bets against the company have trimmed down to 4.9% of the company’s float, from 6.1% at the end of April, according to financial analytics firm S3 Partners.

To contact the reporter on this story: Cristin Flanagan in New York at cflanagan1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Catherine Larkin at clarkin4@bloomberg.net, Steven Fromm

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