Chemours enters July with short sellers adding pressure and the Street trimming targets, even as the stock stages a modest recovery from last week's selloff.
The most notable development this week is that short interest has kept climbing despite the partial price recovery. Shorts now hold 7.2% of the free float — up 12.5% over the past week and 27% higher than a month ago. That is a meaningful acceleration from the building trend flagged in the previous note, when SI was closer to 6.4% of float. The trajectory is consistent and one-directional: shorts have added roughly 1.3 million shares since late May with no meaningful reversal. The ORTEX short score has edged up to 46.5, the highest reading of the past two weeks, though it remains mid-range in absolute terms.
The borrow market tells a different story. Despite the rising short count, availability is extremely loose — over 1,100% of current short interest, meaning lenders are holding far more shares than shorts have borrowed. Cost to borrow is just 0.46%, down 16% on the week and well below the mid-June peak near 0.58%. This is not a stressed borrow market. Shorts can build positions cheaply and easily. The options picture has also cooled from last week's elevated reading: the put/call ratio is 0.33, still above its 20-day average of 0.26, but the z-score has retreated to 1.4 from the extreme above three standard deviations seen during the selloff. Defensive hedging has moderated but not disappeared.
The analyst community sent a mixed signal this week. Mizuho's John Roberts cut his price target from $30 to $25 on July 1 while keeping an Outperform rating — a meaningful trim that reflects dimmer near-term expectations without abandoning the bull thesis. The broader Street is split: a handful of firms including UBS and Truist carry Buy ratings with targets in the $29-30 range, while JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley sit at Neutral with targets of $22 and $21 respectively, barely above the current $20.52 close. The consensus mean target of $25.44 implies roughly 24% upside from here, but the distribution is wide. The EV/EBITDA multiple has edged up to 7.5x, rising modestly over 30 days, while the P/E of 12x remains undemanding. Factor scores are strongest on EPS surprise — ranking in the 96th percentile — and EPS 30-day momentum at 76, though the short score rank of 17 reflects how elevated positioning has become relative to the broader universe.
Earnings history matters here. Chemours printed Q1 results in May and the stock fell nearly 20% the following day, then gave back a further 10% over the next five sessions. The prior release in February produced a modest 1% gain before a 14.5% five-day decline. The pattern across the last four prints is consistently negative over the five-day window. The next event is set for August 5, which gives roughly five weeks for positioning to develop further.
Peer performance this week has diverged sharply from Chemours. TROX fell 5.7% and OLN dropped 7.6%, while DOW slid nearly 10%. CC gained 2.8% — a relative outperformance that runs counter to the direction of short positioning. Whether the August earnings print resolves that divergence one way or the other is the central question to watch into the end of July.
See the live data behind this article on ORTEX.
Open CC on ORTEX →ORTEX Market Intelligence content is generated by AI from a snapshot of ORTEX's proprietary data. Content is informational only and does not constitute investment advice.
