MDV Squeeze Extends: Stock Up 19% as Borrow Stays Fully Seized

MDV has now built a 19% weekly gain on the Warsaw Stock Exchange, with the borrow market still fully locked and cost to borrow continuing its climb — the squeeze dynamic flagged in Monday's note has not resolved, it has deepened.

The lending picture is unchanged in direction but worse in degree. Availability remains at exactly 0% — every share in the lending pool is still lent out, as it has been for all but a handful of days since early June. That figure briefly crept to 1.3% on June 10-11, then snapped back to zero, suggesting any slack in the pool is being absorbed almost immediately. Cost to borrow has now pushed to just under 12%, nearly three times the 4.2% low hit in early June and up 66% on the week. Existing shorts are paying an increasingly heavy carry to hold positions; new shorts simply cannot get in. The ORTEX short score of 80.1 remains firmly elevated, ranking MDV in the 2nd percentile for short score rank and the 1st percentile for availability rank across the universe — both readings have been broadly stable all week, reinforcing that this is a structural condition, not a transient spike.

The price move adds a layer of pain for short holders. MDV has gained 19% on the week and 5.2% on Tuesday alone, closing at PLN 92. That rally comes against a weak backdrop for closely correlated peers: GCO fell 8.4% on the day and is down nearly 10% on the week, while APR — the most directly comparable Warsaw-listed peer — slipped 1.6% over the same period. W was the one peer moving in a similar direction, up 16.6% on the week, though the correlation to MDV is broad rather than fundamental. MDV's divergence from the rest of the apparel retail group sharpens the squeeze narrative: this move does not look like a sector rotation, it looks like short-covering pressure on a stock with no available borrow.

The valuation picture is worth noting. The trailing P/E has expanded to 12.1x, up roughly 2 points over the past 30 days, and EV/EBITDA has drifted to 5.6x, also higher. The 30-day EPS momentum factor score ranks in the 91st percentile, suggesting near-term earnings revisions have been running positive even as the stock's recent note flagged weak Q1 sales commentary. The tension between strong short-term earnings momentum and a narrative of consumer spending pressure in Central Europe is unresolved — and the stock's EPS forward growth factor scores a respectable 68th percentile, so there is fundamental fuel underpinning some of the re-rating.

The ownership structure constrains how this resolves. ULTRO, the controlling entity, holds 38.5% of shares. Polish pension and investment funds — Allianz Polska, AgioFunds, Nationale-Nederlanden — together account for another 14-15%. With that much stock in hands unlikely to lend into the market, the structural tightness in the borrow pool is not easily self-correcting. BlackRock added a small position in May; the scale is modest, but it is the one active-flow signal in an otherwise static holder register.

The next scheduled earnings event is October 1. Between now and then, the key variable is whether any institutional holder begins releasing shares into the lending market — if not, the zero-availability condition and its associated cost will remain the defining constraint on positioning for short sellers watching this stock.