MDV enters this week carrying one of the tightest borrow conditions in the market — every share available to lend is already out, while the stock itself has rallied sharply, creating a genuine squeeze dynamic on the Warsaw Stock Exchange.
The lending story is stark. Availability has dropped to exactly 0% — every share in the lending pool is currently lent out — and has been at or near that level for most of the past month. This is not a recent tightening: the 52-week low for availability is also 0%, meaning the borrow market has been fully seized at the extremes repeatedly. Cost to borrow reinforces the picture. At nearly 12%, it has almost doubled over the past week — up 66% — after briefly dipping to 4.2% in early June before resuming its climb. For shorts who are already in, rolling positions is expensive; for new entrants, there are simply no shares to borrow. The ORTEX short score of 80.4 places MDV in a high-conviction short-squeeze setup by quantitative measure, ranking in the 2nd percentile for short score rank and the 1st percentile for utilization rank across the universe.
Against that background, the stock's price move is notable. MDV is up 15% on the week and 12% over the past month, closing at PLN 87.48 on Monday. The earnings history adds context: the most recent release on June 11 generated an 11% single-day move. That reaction appears to be a driver of the current momentum. With the next event pencilled in for October 1, the stock is now trading well off its recent base but short sellers have no obvious exit valve — borrow is unavailable and the cost to hold is rising.
The Street picture for MDV is sparse. No recent analyst changes appear in the data. On valuation, the stock trades at a trailing P/E of 11.5x, up about 1 point over the past week and nearly 2 points over the past month as the price has run. EV/EBITDA has moved to 5.4x, expanding roughly 0.3x on the week. Price-to-book is 1.95x. These are not demanding multiples for a Polish apparel e-commerce name, and the forward EPS momentum score — ranked in the 91st percentile over 30 days — suggests estimates have been moving higher recently, even as the 90-day picture (12th percentile) is weaker. The factor profile is mixed: strong momentum and dividend score (76th percentile), but quality metrics like return on capital remain thin, and the EV/EBIT factor ranks only in the 49th percentile.
Ownership is concentrated. ULTRO, a related holding vehicle, controls 38.5% of shares. A cluster of Polish pension and investment funds — PTE Allianz Polska, AgioFunds, Nationale-Nederlanden, Generali — each hold between 4% and 5%, collectively accounting for roughly a fifth of the float. BlackRock and Vanguard have small positions; BlackRock added modestly through May. The insider data is stale (the most recent trade dates to July 2025) and should not be read as a current signal, but the historical pattern shows the founder and CEO, Dariusz Milek, subscribing to nearly 2.6 million shares at PLN 190 in March 2025 — a significant long-side commitment at prices well above current levels.
The peer picture underscores how isolated MDV's move has been. W (Wayfair) surged 23.6% on the week, which is the one comparable that matches the direction, while WSE-listed APR fell almost 5% and GCO dropped nearly 8%. The week has been choppy for global apparel retail; MDV's gain looks idiosyncratic rather than sector-driven.
What to watch: whether cost to borrow continues accelerating toward the mid-teens seen in late May, whether any shares re-enter the lending pool as the stock holds its gains, and how the valuation multiple expansion holds given the October earnings date is still three and a half months away.
See the live data behind this article on ORTEX.
Open MDV on ORTEX →ORTEX Market Intelligence content is generated by AI from a snapshot of ORTEX's proprietary data. Content is informational only and does not constitute investment advice.
