Short sellers tangled in wireless mess

Straight Path Communications’ soaring stock sent short sellers screaming for mercy Monday — none louder than Kerrisdale Capital’s Sahm Adrangi.

SPC, the Virginia-based provider of wireless spectrum licenses, announced Monday that it is set to be acquired by AT&T in a deal valued at $1.6 billion, inclusive of debt.

As part of the deal, SPC shareholders will get shares of AT&T stock valued at $95.63, representing a 162 percent premium to SPC’s closing price of $36.48 on Friday.

That will leave a mark on those shorting the stock. Short sellers borrow stock betting the price will fall. If the stock rises, as Straight Path’s did on Monday, the shorts have to hustle to buy back the stock at the prevailing rate.

Roughly half of SPC’s shares are sold short. One of the company’s most vo- cal critics was Kerrisdale’s Adrangi, who had shorted SPC on two occasions, most recently in January when shares traded in the high $30s.

As of Monday morning, Adrangi still held shares short. It was the latest bout of bad news for Kerrisdale, which has seen its assets under management fall by half following Adrangi’s DUI arrest in the Hamptons last summer.

Adrangi declined to give the exact size of his short position on Monday, but he told The Post that the position was “not very large” and that the news was “not that bad for us.”

In January, Adrangi called SPC a “disgraced ‘5G’ hype vehicle” after the company settled with the FCC for just over $100 million to resolve allegations that it was squatting on licenses.

The settlement was “effectively putting the company out of business,” Adrangi wrote at the time.

Shares of Straight Path closed Monday at $91.64, more than double Friday’s closing price.