GRPN has slipped 7% this week to $25.81, reversing a fraction of its 54% monthly gain, yet the structural squeeze mechanics that have dominated this name all summer remain entirely intact — and Q2 earnings on August 6 are now the next pressure point for a still-enormous short base.
The borrow market tells the most important story. Availability has dropped back to just 3.2% — meaning roughly three shares remain available to borrow for every hundred already lent out. That follows a brief recovery to 13.8% mid-last-week before collapsing again, a pattern that has played out repeatedly throughout July. The 52-week low is 0.51%, and the borrow pool has now spent the vast majority of the past six weeks in single digits. Cost to borrow has risen 18% on the week to 2.23%, a gentle but consistent drift higher that mirrors the tightening pool. The ORTEX short score edged up again to 76.7, its highest reading in the current series, consistent with a lending market where new short supply is effectively exhausted.
Short interest itself is moving, but not fast enough to matter. Bears have trimmed their position by roughly 1% on the week to 28.9% of free float, continuing the slow cover from above 31% in early July. The FINRA fortnightly — confirmed at 13.4 million shares short with days-to-cover running at 9.1 days — makes that unwind structurally painful at any pace. Nine days to cover means bears cannot exit cleanly even if they want to, and the pinched borrow pool means new entrants face a steep entry cost. Options positioning is running in the opposite direction to what you'd expect from a hedged community: the put/call ratio has fallen to 0.33, its lowest reading of the past 52 weeks and nearly three standard deviations below the 20-day average of 0.36. Calls are dominating the flow. That is a bullish lean in the options market running directly counter to the bearish lean in the short book.
The Street is divided and the most recent analyst data, while somewhat dated, frames the debate cleanly. Goldman Sachs (last move in May 2026) rates GRPN a Sell with a $13 target — less than half the current $25.81 close — arguing that revenue recovery remains uncertain and cash flow pressures could complicate debt refinancing. Analysts on the other side, including Northland Capital Markets and Roth Capital, have targets in the $44–$47 range, citing bookings growth and operating leverage. The bull case rests on the restructuring gaining traction: billings expanding, EBITDA recovering, and the stock arguably having already priced in skepticism. The bear case centres on declining billings guidance and rising marketing costs eroding whatever margin gains have been made. At a P/E of 14.6x and EV/EBITDA of 12x, neither valuation is obviously extreme — but the factor score picture is bearish: short score ranks in the 3rd percentile, EV/EBIT in the 3rd, and utilisation rank in the 1st percentile. The stock scores well on nothing except momentum.
Ownership reinforces the structural tension. Pale Fire Capital, the Czech investment firm and largest shareholder, holds 26.8% of the company and has not changed its position. More notable is the June 11 insider sell from CEO Dusan Senkypl, who liquidated 1.35 million shares at $16.54 — raising $22.3 million at a price nearly 40% below where the stock trades today. That sale was flagged in prior notes but bears repeating: the CEO sold a position worth 7.5% of the company six weeks ago, and the stock is now substantially higher. The sale happened; the stock kept climbing anyway. Senkypl himself still appears as a top-five holder with 2.85 million shares, a stake he built recently — the last-reported change shows he added over 2 million shares in the period to June 11.
Earnings history is the final element worth watching. The last two quarterly prints both produced outsized positive reactions: the stock rose 9–12% on the day and added a further 8–13% over the following five sessions. A repeat of that pattern into August 6 would add acute pressure to a short base that still has 9.1 days of cover to work through with a near-empty borrow pool. The question heading into the print is whether the slow, steady covering of the past three weeks accelerates before results — or whether bears sit tight and hope the quarter finally delivers the miss the Goldman thesis has been waiting for.
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