VEON heads into the week of June 17 with its bullish options setup largely intact — but a quiet rebuild in short interest adds a new wrinkle to the picture established just six days ago.
The price action tells the cleaner story first. VEON gained 7.2% over the past week to close at $52.83, adding to a broader recovery from the geopolitical sell-off that knocked the stock roughly 18% earlier in the year. The one-day gain of 1.2% on Tuesday extended that momentum. The month is still slightly negative at -2.7%, which means the stock is reclaiming lost ground rather than breaking fresh highs — a distinction worth keeping in mind.
Options positioning remains the most constructive signal in the data. The put/call ratio has eased further to 0.61, sitting about 1.25 standard deviations below its 20-day average of 0.69. That's a meaningful tilt toward calls, though the z-score has pulled back slightly from the -2.0 extreme flagged in the June 11 note — downside hedges are still being unwound, just at a more measured pace. The 52-week low on PCR is 0.55, so there is still room for the ratio to fall further if bullish sentiment continues to build. The borrow market remains extraordinarily loose: availability stands at roughly 5,044%, meaning for every share currently borrowed there are around 50 available in the lending pool. Cost to borrow has ticked back up to 0.47% after a brief dip to near zero earlier in June, but that remains well within normal territory and poses no friction for would-be shorts.
Short interest deserves a closer look this week, because it is moving in a direction that diverges from the bullish options read. SI climbed 18% over the past week to around 190,000 shares — back to levels last seen in late May, before a notable step-down in early June. In absolute terms, 0.27% of free float is too small to call this a meaningful short conviction story. But the directional pick-up, concentrated in the June 9-12 window, is a shift from the trend described in last week's note. Short sellers are adding at the margins, even as options traders lean the other way. The ORTEX short score of 28.9 remains stable and low, consistent with a stock where shorts are opportunistic rather than structurally bearish.
The valuation picture provides context for why both camps have a case. VEON trades at an EV/EBITDA of 3.0x and a P/E of 7.0x — multiples that screen as cheap in almost any framework. The EV/EBIT factor ranks in the 98th percentile of the universe, meaning the stock is priced more cheaply relative to operating earnings than nearly every comparable. The EPS surprise factor at 74 reflects a track record of beating estimates, and the May earnings print reinforced that: the stock moved 7.8% on the day and 10.2% over the five subsequent sessions. The next earnings event falls on July 31, giving the current setup roughly six weeks to develop before the next catalyst reset.
The institutional register is highly concentrated. Letterone Investment Holdings controls 48.6% of shares, and the next three holders — Lingotto, the Stichting trust vehicle, and Shah Capital — account for a further 24% combined. With fewer than 70 institutional holders in total, the float is thin and ownership changes matter more than they would at a more widely-held name. Lingotto added around 108,000 shares in the March quarter and Wellington added 65,000 shares through April — small moves, but directionally consistent with the bullish options picture. Insider data is stale (last recorded transaction dates to September 2024) and carries no signal weight here.
The next meaningful checkpoint is the Q2 earnings print on July 31. Between now and then, the tension to watch is whether the short interest rebuild accelerates — which would signal growing scepticism about the recovery trade — or fades back as the stock holds its gains above $50.
See the live data behind this article on ORTEX.
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