Sable Offshore Corp. just had one of the most violent weeks in its short listed history — and the lending market has moved from orderly to fully seized in the span of 48 hours.
The collapse in borrow availability tells the most urgent story. A week ago, availability ran at roughly 85%, meaning lenders held ample supply relative to what shorts had already borrowed. By Monday June 29, that had dropped to 35%. By Tuesday June 30, every share in the lending pool was out — availability had crashed to just 4.9%, the tightest reading of the past year and close to the 52-week floor of 2.3%. That is not a gradual tightening; it is a borrow market that essentially closed overnight. The cost to borrow has climbed in tandem, rising 21% on the week to 1.31% — still modest in absolute terms, but up 80% over the past month as demand for shorts has consistently outpaced supply. Short interest itself has accelerated sharply: up 19% on the week to 21.4% of the free float, and up 26% over the month. Shorts have not covered into the decline — they have added to it. The ORTEX short score of 75.6 ranks in the 1st percentile of all stocks, unchanged from the prior note, but the underlying mechanics are now significantly more stressed. Options positioning tells a different story: the put/call ratio of 0.30 is fractionally below its 20-day average of 0.31, essentially flat — suggesting that options traders are not piling into new downside bets at these prices, even as short sellers have.
The price action that triggered this dislocation is stark. The stock fell 55.8% in a single session on June 30 to close at $3.08. That follows a week already down 65.5% and a month down 79%. The catalyst behind the drop has not been specified in the data available here, but the scale of the move — combined with the simultaneous seizure of the borrow market — points to a material development rather than routine selling pressure. Prior recent coverage noted shorts adding modestly into weakness; that pattern has now dramatically accelerated. Correlated peers had a rough week but nothing comparable: CHRD fell 8.1% and GTE dropped 12% — SOC's drawdown dwarfs the sector move by an order of magnitude.
The analyst community has responded quickly, though the direction of travel underscores the depth of the problem. Roth Capital's Leo Mariani cut his price target this morning from $22 to $15 while maintaining a Buy rating — a significant reduction, though a $15 target against a $3.08 close implies either extreme conviction in recovery or a target that has not yet fully caught up with the new price level. Jefferies last moved in April, trimming from $30 to $24 on a maintained Buy. The consensus mean target of $18.00 now sits nearly 6x the current price — a gap that almost certainly reflects stale positioning rather than genuine near-term forecasts. The bull case had centred on Santa Ynez Unit production restart, pro forma working capital improvement, and debt refinancing flexibility; the bear case flagged concentrated asset risk, commodity price sensitivity, and refinancing default risk if production did not resume. One of those bear-case risks appears to have crystallised. The stock's EPS surprise factor ranks in the 92nd percentile historically, but with a PE of 5.4x and EV/EBITDA of 3.2x collapsing alongside the price, valuation multiples have compressed sharply — PE is down 2.7 turns over 30 days, and EV/EBITDA has shed nearly 0.3 turns just this week.
The largest holder, founder and CEO James Flores, held 7.6% of shares as of late April. The most recent insider activity on record shows Flores selling roughly 69,000 shares at $13.56 on April 29 — well above current levels — alongside equity awards for senior management. Net insider activity over the 90 days through April 29 showed net buying of approximately 1.2 million shares at an average cost roughly four times the current price. Those positions are now deeply underwater, which removes one natural source of buying support and adds to the complexity of any recovery narrative.
What to watch next: the next earnings event is scheduled for August 12, and the history of prior prints shows moves of -10%, +15%, and -1% on the day — a wide range that reflects how binary this story has always been. With borrow availability now essentially at zero and short interest accelerating through 21% of the float, any material positive development around Santa Ynez production status or debt refinancing progress would encounter an extremely thin lending supply — the conditions that define the setup heading into the next catalyst.
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