JSW — Jastrzębska Spółka Weglowa — slipped 3.2% on Tuesday to PLN 26.08, giving back a chunk of Monday's 3.7% rally, and the short-side conviction that has defined this stock through June shows no sign of easing.
The ORTEX short score is the clearest single signal here. It has climbed to 80.8 — its highest reading in the entire dataset for this name, and up from 74.9 just two weeks ago. That unbroken ten-session rise in the score captures what the individual metrics confirm in detail: shorts are not covering into price strength, they are adding. Short interest reached 11.1% of free float on June 22, the first confirmed print above 11% in this cycle, with roughly 5.84 million shares short. Each of the rallies JSW has managed this month has been met with additional short-side demand rather than any meaningful reduction in positioning.
The borrow market reinforces that picture, though it offers one small shift since Monday's note. Availability has nudged slightly back to 14.9% from 15.4% — still extremely tight, meaning only one share is available for every six or seven already borrowed, and within touching distance of the 52-week low of 7.5%. Cost to borrow has eased a little to 8.77% from the recent peak above 9.5% mid-last week, but the 30-day trend is still higher, and the week-on-week move is up 13%. Availability has been in a relentless downtrend since early June, when it was running near 46.6%. That compression over three weeks is the dominant technical story in the lending market.
The fundamental backdrop does nothing to discourage the bears. The EPS momentum factor score ranks in the 1st percentile over both 30-day and 90-day windows — as weak a reading as the universe produces. The DTC rank sits in the 5th percentile and utilization rank in the 4th percentile, both flagging a crowded, expensive short with limited cushion. The EV/EBITDA multiple of 2.5x is low in absolute terms, reflecting the market's scepticism about near-term earnings recovery rather than a valuation support. The analyst consensus price target of PLN 22.25 — last updated in late May — sits roughly 15% below Tuesday's close, a rare configuration where even the Street consensus is below market price. Note: that target is now 28 days old and should be treated as indicative rather than current.
Ownership provides little in the way of a counterweight. The Polish State Treasury holds 55% of shares and has not changed its position. International passive managers — Vanguard, BlackRock, Dimensional — have added marginally, but these are mechanical flows rather than active conviction buys. The next earnings event is scheduled for August 20, which leaves the market roughly eight weeks to reassess the coking coal demand outlook before a fundamental datapoint arrives to test the short thesis.
What to watch next is whether Tuesday's 3.2% pullback attracts fresh short additions that push availability back below 13% — the level at which the lending pool last came under genuine strain in late May — or whether the slight easing in cost to borrow signals that demand for new borrows is beginning to plateau even as the short score continues to climb.
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