XPeng closes the week with a rare piece of good news on the tape — a 3.8% weekly gain to $13.24 — but the structural tensions flagged in last week's note have not meaningfully resolved: the borrow market remains chronically tight, shorts are still building, and options traders are now leaning harder into the bull case than at any point in the past year.
The most striking shift this week is in options sentiment. Call demand has surged relative to puts, pushing the put/call ratio to 0.36 — nearly two standard deviations below its 20-day average of 0.45, and just above the 52-week low of 0.36 reached yesterday. That is the most aggressively bullish options positioning XPEV has seen all year. The move follows a month of steady put/call compression, with the ratio running above 0.5 as recently as late May. Whether this reflects conviction buying or short-term call speculation into the August 27 earnings date, the options market is sending an unambiguously bullish signal.
The borrow market tells a more complicated story. Availability tightened to as low as 3.1% on June 25 before loosening back to 11.4% at week's end — a slight improvement from the 12.5% reported last week, but still well within what counts as extremely constrained. For context, the 52-week low was 0.3% on May 28 when the pool was essentially exhausted. The current level means roughly one share remains available for every eight already lent out. Cost to borrow has drifted higher too, up 9% on the week to 1.48% and now 37% above where it was a month ago. Short interest itself has crept up another 0.8% on the week to around 54 million shares, extending a month-long build that represents an 8% increase since early June. The ORTEX short score holds at 70.9 — placing XPEV in the bottom 4% of the universe on short score rank. The borrow market has loosened marginally at the margin, but the structural setup remains one of persistent, elevated short demand.
The Street picture is a study in contradictions. Macquarie upgraded XPEV to Outperform in late May, maintaining a $19 target — the most recent action from a notable firm. Barclays sits at the other end, carrying an Underweight rating with a $16 target after trimming from $17 in March. The mean analyst price target of $153 is clearly a data artefact — likely reflecting HK-listed share prices or a stale currency conversion — and should be disregarded. What is worth noting is the direction of analyst travel: the Macquarie upgrade follows a March downgrade from the same analyst, suggesting the firm sees the recent selloff as having reset the risk/reward. Factor scores add nuance: EPS surprise ranks in the 97th percentile and 30-day EPS momentum in the 96th, meaning estimate revisions have been running strongly positive in the near term. The 90-day EPS momentum reading of just 6, however, signals that the longer trend remains under pressure. XPEV is a stock where the near-term numbers are improving faster than the medium-term trajectory would suggest.
Among peers, RIVN had the standout week, up 16.5% — well ahead of XPEV's 3.8%. Closest correlation peer NIO was roughly flat on the week, down 0.6%. LI fell 7% over the same period. XPEV's relative outperformance versus Li Auto and NIO this week is notable given the persistent short pressure it carries.
With next earnings not until August 27, the period ahead is primarily a data story: monthly delivery figures from XPeng — typically released in the first week of the month — will be the next hard catalyst, and with the borrow market this tight and options positioned this bullishly, any delivery upside would land in a setup primed for sharp upward movement.
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