FLY enters the back half of June caught between two sharply conflicting signals: short sellers rebuilding at their fastest pace in months while the Street just handed the stock its most bullish analyst action in weeks.
The short interest story is the week's most urgent data point. Bears nearly doubled their position in the space of five trading days — shares short jumped 48% week-on-week to 11.35 million, pushing the short interest to 7.1% of the free float. That is up from roughly 4.8% just a week ago, and up 43% against the month-ago level. The step-change is visible in the history: shares short held steady in the 7.5–8.9 million range through most of May, then broke sharply higher on June 9, crossing 11 million and staying there. Whatever triggered that rebuild, it was abrupt and deliberate.
The borrow market tells a more nuanced story, and the nuance matters. Despite the short interest surge, the lending environment has loosened considerably — availability has swung from very tight in early May (roughly 18% at its most extreme on May 6, meaning almost no shares left to borrow) to a comparatively comfortable 131% today, implying far more inventory in the lending pool than shares currently borrowed. Cost to borrow is low at 0.61%, down sharply from the 1.26-1.30% range in early May. That loosening explains how so many new shorts could establish positions so quickly: stock was available, and it was cheap to borrow. Options positioning reinforces the picture without adding much drama — the put/call ratio of 0.39 is broadly in line with its 20-day average of 0.37, marginally above neutral but nowhere near the defensive extreme. Taken together, the positioning looks opportunistic rather than panicked: bears found an easy window to add and took it.
The Street is pulling in the opposite direction. Keybanc upgraded FLY to Overweight on June 15 — yesterday — with a fresh $50 price target, a meaningful shift from its prior Sector Weight rating that carried no target. The broader analyst panel leans constructive: six buy ratings against two holds, with a mean target of $48.22 against a close of $30.95. That implies roughly 56% upside on consensus numbers. Bulls, per the most recent framing, point to Firefly's growing mission track record, a diverse customer base, and the structural expansion of commercial space services. Bears flag the operating losses, a limited history as a public company, and the headline risk around mission anomalies or launch delays. Goldman Sachs sits on the fence at Neutral, last reiterating that view in April with a $32 target — essentially at current levels — while Morgan Stanley maintained Equal-Weight with a $37 target in May. The factor data adds texture: EPS momentum ranks in the 99th percentile over 90 days and the analyst recommendation differential is in the 93rd percentile, both signalling genuine fundamental momentum. The short score of 61.9 has climbed steadily from 51.4 ten days ago, a quiet confirmation that bearish pressure is building even as fundamentals improve.
The insider register complicates the picture further. AeroEquity GP LLC — a 10%-plus owner and private equity holder — sold 8 million shares on June 1 at $48.00, a transaction worth roughly $384 million in total. At $48, that sale was executed well above the current $30.95 price, suggesting either a pre-arranged block exit at IPO-adjacent levels, or that the insiders had a more optimistic view of fair value than the market now assigns. The top institutional holder, AE Industrial Partners, added 17 million shares in its most recent filing (as of June 1), which offsets some of the AeroEquity exit in aggregate flow terms. Vanguard, Van Eck, and BlackRock all added positions in their most recent filings, with BlackRock adding 584k shares as of May 31.
The most recent earnings print (June 4) delivered a 9.3% one-day drop, following a 6.7% decline after the May 4 report. The pattern suggests FLY has been a consistent seller on the release day, though the May event recovered to a +13% five-day return — so the knee-jerk reaction and the subsequent drift have moved in opposite directions. The next scheduled report is August 3, and the short score trajectory between now and then — currently climbing every single session — is the variable most worth tracking.
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