GRPN has reversed course this week, falling 4% to $16.19 — erasing nearly all of the prior week's gain — while the borrow market has quietly snapped back to levels that suggest the brief loosening noted last week was a temporary blip rather than a structural shift.
The most telling change is in availability. After the pool opened to 11.9% on June 16 — the loosest reading in weeks — it has collapsed back to under 1%, sitting at just 0.97% as of June 19. That's as tight as the lending market has been all month, and close to the 52-week floor of 0.5% touched on June 5. The implication is clear: any shares that entered circulation following the CEO's June 11 sale have been rapidly absorbed by borrowers. Short interest has ticked back up, rising 1% on the day to 31% of the free float. That figure has barely budged from its range over the past six weeks — every pull toward 30% has been met with renewed demand. Cost to borrow has climbed 10% on the week to 1.69%, and is up 13% over the past month, though it remains modest in absolute terms. The ORTEX short score has drifted up to 76.7, its highest reading in the current data window, reinforcing that the structural short case remains firmly intact.
Options tell a different story — and the contrast is worth naming. Traders in the options market are running notably bullish relative to their own recent history. The put/call ratio has fallen to 0.36, sitting almost 1.5 standard deviations below its 20-day average and close to its 52-week low of 0.3585. That's the least defensive options positioning of the past year. The divergence between an extremely crowded short book and unusually call-heavy options activity is the central tension on this name right now. One side of that trade will be wrong.
The Street remains split, and the divide has not narrowed. Goldman Sachs raised its target to $13 in May — still a 20% discount to where the stock currently trades. Bulls at Northland and Roth have targets well above current levels, though those figures date from mid-2025 and reflect a considerably more optimistic growth trajectory than management's own guidance, which flags billings down 2.5–5% and revenue down 5–7.5%. The bull case rests on cost leverage and bookings momentum; the bear case is a refinancing risk that hasn't gone away. With a PE near 9.5x and EV/EBITDA at 7.96x — both compressing over the past 30 days — valuation multiples are tightening as earnings expectations drift lower.
Ownership remains the one stabilising anchor. Pale Fire Capital holds 26.8% of shares and has not moved. Dusan Senkypl, the CEO whose $22 million sale on June 11 was the dominant insider story of the past two weeks, still appears on the institutional register with 10.4% through his separate holding. The executive selling that defined May and early June has not continued in recent data, but the 90-day net insider position remains deeply negative at roughly $23.7 million in net sales — a consistent signal from management that the stock's relative strength has been used as an exit opportunity.
Q1 results posted a 9–12% one-day jump and held a further 8–13% over the following week — a pattern that flatters the bull case. The next earnings print is August 6. Between now and then, the key dynamic to watch is whether availability can sustain even the modest loosening of mid-June, or whether fresh short demand reseals the borrow market at near-zero — the condition that has prevailed for most of the past two months.
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