GRPN has extended its remarkable run to $25.68, up another 40% on the week and 27% over the past month, yet the short position that has defined this name all summer remains stubbornly intact — and the lending market is once again flashing the same warning it has issued twice before.
The pattern here is now familiar, but worth naming clearly because it has repeated a third time. Availability collapsed from 13.1% at the start of last week — already tight — to just 0.57% on June 30, before recovering marginally to 4.8% on July 1. That June 30 reading matched the 100% utilisation mark, the tightest point in the 52-week record. This is the third time in six weeks the lending pool has snapped shut: June 5 touched 0.5%, June 19 hit 0.97%, and June 30 hit 0.57%. Each episode followed a brief loosening that looked like structural relief but proved transitory. Cost to borrow has moved with it, rising 54% over the past month to 2.68% — the highest level in the current series, though still modest in absolute terms. The borrow market is not opening up. It is cycling through the same squeeze-and-absorb rhythm, each time with the stock a little higher.
Short interest tells a story of extraordinary resilience in the face of a 40% rally. SI now sits at 30.5% of the free float — 12.4 million shares — down less than 2% on the week and less than 10% over the past month. Those are marginal moves against what is, by any measure, a punishing mark-to-market for anyone short since mid-June. The ORTEX short score is 76.1, barely off its recent high of 76.8. Days-to-cover from the most recent FINRA filing is 8.3 days. Shorts are not capitulating. They are absorbing the pain and holding, which either reflects very strong conviction in a fundamental thesis or a liquidity constraint that makes covering at these levels structurally difficult given how tight the borrow pool has become.
Options positioning gives no support to the bear case's urgency. The put/call ratio is running at 0.37, essentially in line with its 20-day average of 0.38 and near the 52-week low of 0.36. There is no elevated demand for downside protection — options traders are neither panicking nor aggressively pressing the short thesis. That indifference, combined with the analyst picture, creates an unusual tension. Goldman Sachs maintained its Sell rating in May with a $13 target — now roughly half the current price. Northland and Roth Capital hold Outperform and Buy ratings respectively, with older targets in the $39-$47 range that now look like they were tracking a different stock. The mean consensus target is $26.33, which happens to sit almost exactly at the current price. None of this analyst coverage has been updated recently enough to be authoritative at $25.68.
The ownership structure adds one more layer. CEO Dusan Senkypl sold 1.35 million shares on June 11 at $16.54 — a $22 million transaction — and the stock has since rallied a further 55% above that sale price. His remaining stake of 2.85 million shares, built via a 2.06 million share addition disclosed in the same June 11 filing, means he is still a substantial holder. Pale Fire Capital holds 26.8% of shares and has not moved its position. The float is narrow and concentrated: three holders — Pale Fire, Lefkofsky, and Continental General — control nearly 47% of shares outstanding. In a name with 30.5% short interest and 8.3 days to cover, that concentration matters. Any forced covering into a thin float has historically produced violent upside moves here — and the earnings calendar now provides the next scheduled pressure point, with Q2 results set for August 6.
The setup heading into that print: short interest remains historically high and essentially unmoved through a 40% rally, availability is back near its tightest levels, cost to borrow is at a multi-month high, and the ORTEX short score places positioning in the top few percent of the universe. The question August 6 will answer is whether the fundamental picture — still contested between a Goldman Sell at $13 and bulls pointing to operational leverage — gives the short thesis enough cover to hold, or whether another earnings beat like the 12% next-day move seen in May accelerates the cycle into something more structural.
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