AIIO (Robo.ai Inc.) enters mid-July with its lending market at maximum stress — every share in the borrow pool is spoken for, and short sellers are adding positions at the fastest weekly pace in over a month.
The borrow situation is the sharpest signal here. Availability has collapsed to just 7.6% — meaning roughly one share remains available for every thirteen already lent out — down from 24% just a week ago, a drop of nearly 69%. That tightening has coincided with short interest climbing 50% in a single week, from roughly 1.25 million shares to just under 1.88 million. Cost to borrow reinforces the picture: at nearly 296% annualised, it has edged up another 9% on the week and remains at a level that makes holding a short position genuinely expensive. The month-long arc is telling — CTB peaked above 425% in early June, eased as shorts partially covered through late June, and is now rebuilding as fresh short interest flows back in. Availability, which briefly recovered to 44% in late June, has since re-tightened sharply. The ORTEX short score of 61.9 — at its highest reading of the available history — captures this rebuilding pressure in a single number.
The broader positioning picture is one of aggressive short conviction colliding with very thin borrow supply. The days-to-cover reading ranks in the 91st percentile across the factor score universe, meaning it would take longer to unwind the short book than almost any comparable name. At the same time, the utilization rank sits at zero — a reflection of the fact that every available share is already on loan and the metric has effectively maxed out. Short interest as a raw share count remains well below its early-June peak of around 3.2 million shares, suggesting the current rebuilding phase has not yet returned to that prior extreme. Options data from the snapshot is too stale to use — the most recent PCR reading is over three years old — so the options market offers no current read on sentiment direction.
The Street is largely quiet on AIIO. No recent analyst changes are available, and the only valuation anchor in the data is an enterprise value figure of roughly $1.5 billion — a number that sits in notable tension with the stock's current $4 price and the absence of any market cap figure in the live data, suggesting reported fundamentals may lag the current share structure significantly. The ORTEX factor scores paint a cautious fundamental picture: a dividend score of 23 and a sector score of 50 indicate no particular fundamental strength, while the quality metrics noted in prior coverage — a Piotroski F-score of 1, deeply negative ROA, and a distressed Altman Z-score — have not materially improved. The stock is up 47% over the past month despite this backdrop, which helps explain why short sellers are rebuilding positions even at a 296% borrow cost.
Earnings history adds one layer of context worth watching. The last four prints produced day-one moves of -3%, +4%, +28%, and -21% respectively — a pattern of high volatility with no consistent direction. The most recent print, in June, saw a modest -3% day-one reaction followed by a 6% five-day recovery. No next earnings date is scheduled in the data.
The setup to watch is whether fresh short supply enters the lending pool — availability at 7.6% and falling leaves almost no room for new positions to be established without either pushing borrow costs even higher or triggering forced covering among existing shorts who can no longer source stock.
See the live data behind this article on ORTEX.
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