American Airlines has seen its stock rise this week because it got caught up in chaos between small investors and market traders That Are betting against the Business

American Airlines’ stock climbed before this week during market volatility around struggling companies, and now the airline is using the opening to sell around $1.1 billion in new shares.

American said Friday that it reached a deal with lenders such as Goldman Sachs and Citigroup on the offering. Shares fell more than 6% after American’s revelation, which would dilute the value of existing stock.

A spokesman said the company had no additional comment on the time of the potential stock sale, and would not create any executives available for comment.

Small investors that focus on Reddit have rallied to shield businesses that have been targeted by short sellers that make bets that particular stocks will fall in price. In the most notable instance, shares of GameStop soared more than 1,500% in the last 3 weeks.

American is undoubtedly the largely heavily shorted stock among publicly traded leading U.S. airlines, in 25.5percent of its total shares, according to FactSet. Among the six biggest U.S. airlines, JetBlue Airways is next at 5.1%.

Chester Spatt, a finance professor at Carnegie Mellon, said American must inform potential investors that its price could be inflated by present market chaos, but also said that it was”natural” for your company to make an offering.

“If a business believes that its stock price is elevated, it’s reasonable for a company to issue securities,” Spatt said.

Since the beginning of the pandemic that has devastated the travel industry, analysts have identified American since the very troubled U.S. carrier and also the most likely to eventually seek bankruptcy protection if travel remains seriously depressed. American moved into the pandemic with more debt than other leading U.S. airlines and has added to its weight with billions more in borrowing from private resources and the federal government.

American’s stocks jumped by up to 31 percent on Thursday prior to giving up most the growth and closing up more than 9%. The increase happened the exact same day that American reported a record annual reduction of $8.9 billion for 2020 and gave a grim outlook for the first quarter of 2021.

On Thursday, American CEO Doug Parker began a call with analysts and reporters by saying that the corporation wouldn’t answer questions about the odd movement in its stock price.