COUR has now printed its June 23 earnings and the stock is trading flat on the week — the real story is what happened to the bearish positioning that built ahead of the release, and whether the covering trend that defined the past month has any further room to run.
Short sellers have pulled back sharply but remain a meaningful presence. SI has dropped 27% since mid-May, falling from a peak near 19% of the free float to 12.3% now. The retreat has been steady and consistent — almost every daily reading through June has been lower than the one before it. That said, 12.3% is still an elevated level by any conventional measure, and the pace of covering has slowed noticeably over the past two weeks. The borrow market is not under pressure: availability is running at roughly 678%, meaning shares available to lend outnumber those already borrowed by nearly seven to one, and cost to borrow has more than halved this week to 0.45% — back at the low end of where it sat through most of May and early June. Bears are not being squeezed out; they are choosing to leave, slowly.
Options positioning shifted in a notable direction heading into the print. The put/call ratio climbed to 0.30 — more than two standard deviations above its 20-day average of 0.22. That is the most defensive options reading COUR has seen in recent months, though it is still well below the 52-week high of 0.82. The hedging demand that appeared in the final session before earnings does not appear to have paid off: the stock is up roughly 1.9% on the day and 1.5% on the week, a muted but positive response relative to what the options market was pricing. The prior earnings print on April 23 produced a 14.6% single-day decline, so the bar for relief was low.
The analyst community remains constructive but not aggressive. Today RBC Capital and Needham both reiterated their positive ratings — Outperform at $7 and Buy at $10 respectively — with no target changes. Those reiterations follow target cuts from JPMorgan (to $8) and BMO Capital (to $7) in late April, actions taken after the Q1 miss. The consensus sits at Buy, with a mean target of $8.00 against a current price of $5.41 — implying roughly 48% upside on paper. Goldman Sachs retains a Sell with a $6 target, the lone dissenter in the visible coverage. The EPS forward momentum factor scores at the 96th percentile — the highest-ranked factor on the sheet — suggesting estimate revisions have been running in the right direction even as the absolute stock level has lagged. Value metrics are supportive: EV/EBITDA is below 1.5 and the P/E has drifted down to around 11.5x over the past month. The bear case centres on enterprise segment weakness and net retention pressure; the bull case rests on consumer learner growth and the potential uplift from the pending Udemy merger.
Institutional ownership adds a complicating layer. Insight Venture Management, the largest holder with nearly 10% of shares, sold around 1.9 million shares across May 19-20 at prices just above $5.20. That is a significant reduction in absolute terms, though Insight still held 28.4 million shares as of late May. No other top-ten holder showed material selling in recent filings, and BlackRock added 1.7 million shares through May.
The peer group offers modest context. DUOL gained 4% on the week and STRA added 4.2%, suggesting some broader appetite for education names. EDU fell 4.3%, a reminder the sector is not uniformly bid. COUR's 1.5% weekly gain trails the stronger performers in the cohort.
What to watch next is straightforward: the July 23 earnings date is now the next focal point, and the trajectory of short covering between now and then will indicate whether this week's results were enough to resolve the bear thesis or merely pause it.
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