GRPN keeps climbing — up 64% over the past month and another 7.4% this week to $28.58 — yet the short position is only now beginning to crack, and the borrow market remains one of the tightest in the name's recent history.
The clearest shift from last week's note is a genuine, if modest, reduction in short interest. Bears have trimmed their position by roughly 7% over the past week, bringing short interest to 29.0% of free float — down from 31.1% a week ago. That is the most meaningful covering since the rally began, and it marks the first time the short position has moved directionally lower with any conviction. Yet 29% is still an enormous short base, and the days-to-cover reading from the latest FINRA fortnightly (6.1 days) makes any accelerated unwind structurally difficult. The borrow market underlines the squeeze risk: availability has loosened slightly to 13.8% from the near-zero readings of July 7-8, but that recovery follows a week where the pool was essentially locked at 0.6–1.0%. The 52-week low was 0.51%, and availability has spent far more time in single digits than in double digits over the past month. Cost to borrow eased 14% this week to 1.89% — consistent with the slight relaxation in availability — but remains elevated relative to levels before the summer run began. Positioning still looks tight rather than free.
Options traders are telling a different story, and it is worth naming the contrast. The put/call ratio has actually fallen to 0.362, just a whisker above its 52-week low of 0.357 — the least defensive reading in a year. It is running fractionally below the 20-day average of 0.375, with a z-score of –0.89. Buyers are not hedging into this rally; they are chasing it with calls. That divergence — a heavy short base still in place, borrow extremely tight, yet options skewing bullish to a degree not seen all year — sets up the most interesting tension heading into the next catalyst.
The Street is deeply split, and the current price sits uncomfortably between two camps. Goldman Sachs raised its Sell target to $13 in May, roughly half the current price. Northland Capital and Roth Capital both carry Buy-equivalent ratings with targets from prior year updates in the $39–$47 range — well above $28.58, though those calls are from mid-2025 and should be read with some caution given time elapsed. The mean price target of $26.33 is actually slightly below the current price, suggesting the stock has now traded through the consensus. That gap between current price and the average analyst target is itself a signal: the move has been driven by something other than a fundamental re-rating. The ORTEX short score of 75.6 ranks in the 4th percentile of stocks on short score — one of the most shorted names in the system. The EV/EBITDA multiple has risen to 13.3x, up nearly a full turn on the week, compressing the value case that bulls once cited.
Institutional ownership adds an important wrinkle. Pale Fire Capital holds 26.8% of shares, essentially unchanged. CEO Dusan Senkypl sold 1.35 million shares on June 11 at $16.54 — a $22.3 million disposal when the stock was roughly 40% below its current price. That sale was disclosed weeks before the stock reached these levels, but it is the largest insider transaction in the recent window and worth tracking against any further filings as GRPN approaches $29. Senkypl simultaneously holds 7.5% of the company as a named holder, so he remains materially aligned — but the direction of travel from that transaction stands in contrast to the current momentum.
Earnings are the next hard stop: Q2 results are scheduled for August 6. The two most recent prints produced next-day gains of 9.1% and 12.2% respectively, with five-day follow-throughs of 12.9% and 8.3%. The question heading into that event is whether a stock trading through its mean analyst target, with 29% of the float short and borrow still very tight, reacts to the print itself — or to whatever covering activity the print triggers among a short base that has started, but not finished, moving.
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