Cameco Catches a Bid as Uranium Peers Rally in Step

The borrow market is almost entirely disengaged from the rally. Short interest is just 0.58% of free float — a level so low it barely registers as a positioning signal. The slight drift lower on the week (down 2.9%) and the more notable monthly accumulation (up 14.7%) suggest some modest short-building through May that has now stalled and partially reversed. Cost to borrow has jumped 58% over the past week to 0.83%, which looks striking in percentage terms but translates to an entirely unremarkable rate in absolute terms — it was under 0.5% a week ago, and even at current levels borrowing Cameco is nearly free. Availability is enormous: roughly 162 million shares remain available to lend against fewer than 2.5 million shares currently borrowed, an availability ratio of nearly 5,000%. There is no squeeze dynamic here, and the ORTEX short score of 27 — stable across the past ten days — confirms this is not a stock under short-side pressure.

The Street picture is harder to read with precision: the analyst dataset is more than five years stale and carries no usable price targets or recent rating changes, so those data points are set aside. What the factor scores do show is notable in a couple of places. The dividend score ranks in the 99th percentile, though the most recent dividend data on file dates to early 2022. The short score percentile rank of 87 reflects a benign lending environment — high rank here means low borrow pressure — consistent with the raw data above. The EV/EBITDA multiple runs at 30.9x, marginally lower over 30 days, and the price-to-book of 8.0x has drifted up around 0.5 turns on the week as the share price advanced. The PE at 73.6x is a reminder that Cameco carries a demanding earnings multiple, with the EP factor (earnings yield) ranking near the bottom of its universe — the stock prices in an optimistic future, not the current income statement.

Institutional positioning adds texture. Mirae Asset is the largest disclosed holder at 3.5% of shares, followed by Capital Research at 3.2% and a recently opened Vanguard position at 2.7% — the latter newly established as of Q1. Van Eck, BMO, and RBC all added to positions through May, while Merrill Lynch and KeyBank trimmed. The holder count of 352 institutions suggests broad coverage without concentrated bet-sizing. Insider activity is low-significance: the most recent trades are small sells by VPs and the CLO in the CAD 67k–217k range, all scored 3 out of 10 on significance, consistent with routine compensation-plan disposals rather than any meaningful directional signal.

Q2 results are scheduled for July 31. The two prior earnings reactions on file produced a 4.7% one-day gain and a 5.2% decline — both followed by a softer five-day tape, with the five-day return negative in both cases. That is thin history, but the pattern of initial enthusiasm giving way to give-back is worth keeping in view as the date approaches. The next six weeks will test whether the sector's re-rating narrative is durable enough to hold the valuation through a quarterly reporting cycle that will need to show progress on contract volumes and price realizations.