SALIX heads into the back half of June with a striking anomaly in its lending market: borrowing costs jumped more than fivefold in a single session, even as the broader lending pool remains unusually deep.
The cost-to-borrow story is the most interesting thing happening here right now. The fee to borrow SALIX shares leapt from roughly 3.5% to 19.1% between June 16 and June 18 — a near-fivefold move in 48 hours. That kind of spike typically signals a sudden rush of demand for borrows, either from new short sellers entering positions or existing shorts rolling exposure. What makes it unusual is the context: availability remains extraordinarily loose at over 3,300%, meaning roughly 33 shares are available to lend for every one currently borrowed. That is not a squeeze dynamic. The borrow pool is not under pressure. Instead, the CTB spike looks more like a pricing event — a single large locate request or a liquidity-thin lending pool repricing aggressively — rather than a structural tightening of supply.
The actual short positioning is modest. Short interest against the free float is at early-stage levels, consistent with the low utilisation rate of under 4% — the first reading of its kind in the available history, suggesting SALIX has only recently appeared on the lending radar at all. Whatever is driving the CTB move, it has not yet translated into a meaningful short position being built. Bears, if there are any, are paying a premium to get into a trade that few others have made so far.
On the broader picture, data coverage on SALIX is thin. The company carries an enterprise value of approximately SEK 1.1 billion based on year-end figures, with no analyst consensus, no price target, and no sector classification in the current data. The stock closed at SEK 63.40 on June 18, up just over 2% on the day, and no upcoming earnings date is flagged. A prior earnings event in late May passed without associated price-reaction data.
The number to watch is whether the cost-to-borrow normalises back toward the 3–4% range seen earlier in the week, or whether it holds elevated — the latter would suggest the demand driving the spike is more persistent than a one-day pricing anomaly.
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