GRPN just delivered its most explosive week in months, surging 41% to $22.88 — yet the short interest that has defined this name for half a year barely moved, and the borrow market tells a story of rapid reabsorption rather than capitulation.
The price action demands context. Last week's note flagged availability collapsing back below 1% after the brief post-CEO-sale loosening. That tightness proved the prelude: by June 22, availability had dropped to just 0.93%, effectively a locked lending pool. Then, in the days following, it eased materially — back to 13.3% by June 25. The pattern now mirrors what happened on June 16 exactly two weeks ago, when a similar loosening to 11.9% was absorbed within days. What's different this time is that the price ran hard alongside the opening: a 25% single-day move on June 25 alone. Short interest, however, barely budged. At 31.1% of the free float — 12.7 million shares — it is essentially unchanged from the 31% reading flagged in the June 22 note. The ORTEX short score has ticked up to 76.8, its highest reading in the current series. Shorts are not running. They are sitting, absorbing the mark-to-market, and watching availability. Cost to borrow has edged up 19% on the week to 2.02% — still modest in absolute terms, but the month-on-month move is now 44%. The lending market is incrementally more expensive to operate in, even if it isn't yet punishing.
The options market offers a mild corroborating signal. The put/call ratio has nudged up to 0.40, about 1.6 standard deviations above its 20-day average of 0.38. That's elevated but not extreme — the 52-week high is 0.86. Options traders have added a small amount of protective cover into the rally, but this is not a market pricing a full reversal. The setup looks more like uncertainty hedging than outright bearish positioning.
The Street remains sharply divided. Goldman Sachs, in the most recent action from a bellwether firm (May 12), raised its target from $10 to $13 while holding a Sell rating — a move that now looks badly stale with the stock at $22.88. That $13 target should be treated with caution: it was set when the stock traded materially lower, and the gap between Goldman's view and the current price is significant enough to flag. Bulls at Northland Capital and Roth have carried targets north of $40 for some time, and the stock is now converging toward that range from below. The mean analyst target across the panel is $26.33 — a narrow premium to where the stock closed Thursday. The PE has compressed to 9.5x and the EV/EBITDA to 7.96x, both down meaningfully over the past month as the price has run. Valuation is less of a tailwind now than it was at $16.
The ownership picture adds texture. Pale Fire Capital, the largest holder at 26.8% of shares, has remained flat through all of this — an anchor that limits the float and contributes to the structural tightness in the lending pool. CEO Senkypl's June 11 sale of 1.35 million shares at $16.54 — the transaction that temporarily loosened the borrow — now looks like extraordinarily poor timing in hindsight, with the stock 38% higher a fortnight later. His remaining stake is still substantial. The broader insider picture across the 90-day window remains net-selling, with over $23 million in net disposals, though no new trades have appeared since June 11. The next earnings event is August 6 — and given the stock's recent history of double-digit post-print moves (up 12% after May's result, up 9% in the five-day window following), that date is now the focal point for anyone trying to understand whether this week's squeeze has changed anything structurally about the short thesis.
What to watch is whether availability holds at 13% or collapses again toward the sub-1% floor that has been the default state for most of May and June — the speed of that reabsorption will reveal whether this week's squeeze prompted any genuine short covering, or whether the structural 31% position is simply weathering the storm ahead of August 6.
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