Hertz Global Holdings has now shed 64% in a month, shorts have added another leg, and the lending market remains fully locked — yet the options market continues to lean toward calls rather than puts.
The short interest story has moved again since yesterday's note. The position climbed a further 2.3% on Tuesday to 90.9 million shares, or 29.2% of free float. That is up 18% on the week and 75% over the past month. To be clear about what that pace represents: short interest has nearly doubled in roughly six weeks. The ORTEX short score is 74.7 — ranking in the bottom 4% of every tracked name globally — and has barely budged all month. Bears are not repositioning; they are pressing.
The borrow picture remains split, exactly as it has been for weeks. Availability is pinned at 0% — every share in the lending pool is currently lent out, a condition that has held without interruption since late June. That is the tightest reading of the past year and the 52-week low. What continues to shift is cost. Borrowing HTZ has become substantially cheaper this week: cost to borrow fell nearly 48% to 1.32%, from the 2.52% reading on July 7 and far below the June 26 spike to 7.03%. The combination is unusual — every share is lent, yet the price of new borrows keeps falling. That dynamic suggests the pool of available shares is not growing, but existing borrowers are rolling positions at softer rates rather than unwinding them.
Options traders remain the stubborn counterweight. The put/call ratio has dropped to 1.28 — well below its 20-day average of 1.59 and near the 52-week low of 1.17. That reading is nearly a full standard deviation below the recent mean. For context, the PCR was running above 2.2 through most of June; the collapse since then reflects a sustained rotation into calls despite the stock hitting fresh lows. The divergence between a 29% short book and a near-record call-skewed options market has now persisted for over a month without resolving in either direction.
The Street offers little conviction. Morgan Stanley's Adam Jonas cut his target to $3.50 at the end of June — flagged in last week's note — and the consensus mean sits at $4.43. With the stock at $1.84, the implied upside from analyst targets is more than 140%, but those targets have been consistently above the trading price throughout this entire decline. Bank of America carries an Underperform with a $2.70 target. The analyst tone is uniformly cautious rather than constructively bullish, and no recent upgrade has emerged to challenge the bear positioning. The Piotroski F-score improvement and the return on assets turning positive — flagged in the July 8 score note — have not translated into price momentum. On valuation, EV/EBITDA has compressed to 41.8x, down roughly 4 points over the past 30 days as the stock falls, though with negative earnings the traditional multiples carry little analytical weight here.
The ownership picture has one feature worth watching. Knighthead Capital, the post-bankruptcy sponsor, holds 57.5% of shares. Jane Street added 15.6 million shares as of June 26 — a notable build from a firm that typically trades rather than holds. Every C-suite insider who traded in the 90-day window — including the CEO, CFO, and COO — sold. The CFO sold 150,000 shares at $4.83 on June 17; the stock is now $1.84.
Closest peer CAR rose 2.8% on the week. MRT gained 10.8%. HTZ fell 12.4% over the same period — a stark divergence from names in the same transport segment facing similar macro conditions, suggesting the pressure on HTZ is idiosyncratic rather than sector-wide.
Earnings land August 6. That print becomes the primary near-term test of whether the gap between the 29% short position and the call-leaning options market finally resolves — and in which direction.
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