UAMY enters July with every share in the lending pool lent out and short interest climbing — a combination that makes the stock one of the tightest borrows in the critical minerals universe right now.
The lending market tells the most urgent story this week. Availability has dropped to exactly zero — not a single share remains available to borrow — and that reading has held for multiple consecutive sessions. This is the tightest the borrow has been all year, matching the 52-week floor on availability. Short interest has been building alongside that squeeze: at 23.8% of the free float, it rose 12% over the past week alone, adding roughly 3.5 million shares to the short position. The cost to borrow, at 2.25%, is up 17% on the week — a modest absolute level, but the direction of travel confirms demand for borrows is outpacing supply. Positioning looks structurally crowded: when availability is zero and short interest is rising, new shorts cannot enter without dislodging existing ones.
Options traders are pulling in the opposite direction. The put/call ratio has fallen to 0.28, slightly below its 20-day average and running about one standard deviation on the bullish side of normal. The 52-week low on the PCR is 0.12, so this is far from extreme call enthusiasm — but relative to the extreme short positioning in the lending market, the options desk is not betting on a decline. That divergence is the week's central tension: the short book is as crowded as it gets, while options flow leans more constructive.
The fundamental case rests heavily on antimony pricing. HC Wainwright is the only covering analyst, maintaining a Buy with a target of $11.75 — raised from $11.50 in mid-May. The bull case centres on antimony prices that jumped from roughly $6 to $28.72 per pound year-over-year, alongside 12% volume growth. Management has guided 2026 revenue at $125 million. The bear case is harder to dismiss: the company reported a $3.9 million net loss in the most recent quarter, weighed down by share-based compensation, and the stock has lost 19% over the past month to close at $7.26. The PE multiple has contracted roughly 13 turns over 30 days, and EV/EBITDA has compressed nearly five turns in the same window. The ORTEX short score of 71 ranks near the very bottom of the universe — in the first percentile — flagging this as one of the most short-pressured names on the platform.
Insider activity adds a note of caution. The CFO sold $975,000 worth of shares at $9.75 on June 2, and an Executive Director sold nearly $538,000 worth at $8.98 in early April — both at prices well above the current $7.26. A director made a small purchase of 12,500 shares at $7.45 on June 15, but net insider activity over 90 days is a net sell in value terms despite a positive share count, driven by those larger executive disposals closer to the highs. Institutional ownership has been building: BlackRock and State Street each added positions in the latest reporting period, and Vanguard and Columbia both appear as fresh buyers in Q1 filings.
Correlated peers finished the week in the red. MP fell 4.9% on the week, LAC dropped 7.1%, and TMC gave back 8.1% — all while UAMY gained 3.6%. That relative outperformance in a weak week for the sector is the data point worth watching ahead of the next quarterly print, scheduled for August 13.
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