Dorian LPG enters the first week of July having shed 14% in five sessions — a bruising decline that lands the stock back near $34.78, close to where its CEO bought shares in January.
The most striking dynamic this week is the divergence between a stock in freefall and a short-selling community only just beginning to lean in. Short interest has climbed 17% over the past week to 4.4% of the free float — still a relatively modest absolute level, but the pace of the rebuild is notable. Shorts added roughly 250,000 shares in a single jump between June 23 and June 25, coinciding with the sharpest part of the price decline. Yet the borrow market itself tells a calmer story: availability is extremely loose at roughly 1,900% — meaning there are nearly twenty shares available to borrow for every one currently short — and cost to borrow has fallen 24% on the week to just 0.41%. There is no supply constraint pressing on existing shorts, and no meaningful squeeze pressure in the lending pool. The ORTEX short score has nudged up to 39.7 from 36.6 ten days ago, reflecting the trend rather than an extreme level.
Options positioning is notably unbothered by the selloff. The put/call ratio sits at 0.20, barely above its 20-day average of 0.19 and well within one standard deviation — only a fraction of its 52-week high near 0.66. Call volume continues to dominate the options market, suggesting that options traders are either treating the decline as a buying opportunity or simply have not moved to hedge aggressively. That complacency is worth watching given the scale of the price move.
The Street retained a constructive tilt heading into this weakness. The most recent analyst action came on May 22, when Jefferies raised its target from $42 to $55 while maintaining its Buy rating — a move that now looks well out of the money, with the stock trading $20 below that target. A second firm simultaneously downgraded to Hold from Buy that same day, raising its target to $51 but stepping back from outright conviction. The consensus mean target of $51.20 implies roughly 47% upside from current levels, though the gap between that figure and the stock price reflects how quickly the rate environment has deteriorated. The bull case rests on U.S. VLGC export volumes, which rose 8.3% year-on-year in early 2025, and on Middle Eastern shipments tracking similarly higher. The bear case is more immediately operative: spot rates have collapsed toward $30,000 per day from a historical norm closer to $50,000, and naphtha competition is eroding charter rate support at the margin.
Valuation has compressed sharply. The price-to-book has fallen to 1.28x, down roughly 14% over the past 30 days, while the P/E has slipped to 8.4x. The EV/EBITDA at 7.5x remains modest in absolute terms but has been drifting. The dividend yield factor ranks in the 90th percentile — a function of Dorian's shareholder return history — while the 30-day forward EPS momentum ranks in only the 9th percentile, meaning earnings estimate revisions have turned decisively negative near-term.
The insider picture adds one layer of context. The most recent net insider activity over 90 days is technically positive: Chairman and CEO John Hadjipateras bought 15,000 shares at $27.30 in early January, a purchase that still underpins a small positive net position for the period. But every subsequent insider transaction has been a sale — including the subsidiary CEO selling twice in April near $35, and the CFO selling 10,000 shares in February at $34.84, almost exactly where the stock trades today. The selloffs were at higher prices; the stock is back to levels that triggered those disposals. Dorian's shipping peers moved in lockstep this week: TK fell nearly 20%, ASC dropped 22%, and TNK was off 18%, suggesting this is a sector-level repricing of rate expectations rather than a company-specific event.
The next scheduled earnings release is August 3. How freight rates trend between now and then — and whether the gap between the $51 consensus target and a $35 stock begins to close or widen — frames the key question heading into that print.
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