Steadfast Group heads into the back half of July carrying one of the more striking month-on-month repositioning stories in the Australian insurance space — a stock up 31% in a month while short sellers beat a rapid retreat.
The most compelling feature of this week's data is not where short interest is now, but where it came from. At the start of June, shorts held roughly 38 million shares — close to 3.5% of the free float. By early July that had collapsed to around 16.7 million shares, or 1.5% of the float. That is a short position more than halved in five weeks. The unwind accelerated sharply through mid-June: from 37 million shares on June 8 to 17 million by June 19, a fall of more than 50% in eleven trading days. The price reaction was equally dramatic — the stock jumped 35.9% on the day of a June earnings event, confirming the squeeze dynamic. What is left is a rump short position, modest and stable, with the past week's 5% week-on-week uptick in shares short doing little to reverse the broader trend.
The borrow market now reflects that normalisation. Availability is extraordinarily loose — roughly 2,600% of current short interest, meaning there are around 26 shares available to borrow for every one already lent out. That compares with a 52-week low of around 400%, itself not tight by any standard, underscoring just how much excess capacity now sits in the lending pool. Cost to borrow has eased alongside, running at 1.24% — broadly flat on the month and well within the 1.1%-1.4% band it has occupied all year. There is no squeeze pressure here; the structural setup for a borrow-driven catalyst has dissipated.
The Street is cautious but not negative. The analyst consensus sits at hold, split two buys against four holds, with a mean price target of A$5.78 against a current price of A$5.17 — implying around 12% upside from current levels. The analyst data carries a three-week lag, however, and predates the full appreciation of the June price surge; the target may not fully reflect the re-rating. On valuation, the stock now trades at 14.8x trailing earnings and 2.1x book, with the P/E up roughly 2.6 turns over 30 days as the price moved sharply. EV/EBITDA has compressed slightly to around 10x. Factor scores paint a mixed picture: EPS momentum is weak over both 30 and 90 days (bottom-decile territory), EPS surprise ranks in the 17th percentile, and analyst recommendation diffusion scores near the bottom of the range at just 1 out of 100. Only the dividend and sector scores sit at neutral.
Among peers, the week's price action was broadly aligned. Closest peer AUB Group gained 1.4% on the week while QBE Insurance added 2.6%, and nib Holdings rose 1.7%. Steadfast's own 2% weekly gain sits comfortably within that range, suggesting the stock is now trading in step with the group rather than against it — a notable shift from the divergence that characterised the heavy short period in late May and early June.
The next scheduled event is a full-year result on 26 August. The June print delivered a 35.9% single-day move; the February result produced a 6.4% gain. The August report will test whether the re-rating has fully priced in the operational story, or whether the June jump reflected an overshoot that the fundamental numbers will need to validate.
See the live data behind this article on ORTEX.
Open SDF 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.
