ASM International heads into its Q2 2026 earnings report with a stock down 20% in a month — yet short sellers are nowhere to be found.
The price action has been severe: ASM closed at €756, down 5.3% on Tuesday and 16% on the week. The move is not idiosyncratic. Closest peers BESI and ASML fell 9.6% and 8.5% on the same day. SMHN, FORM and AMKR each dropped between 5% and 7%. This is a sector-wide rout, not a company-specific event — which matters for how the print is likely to be read. Despite the carnage, the lending market signals no conviction from bears: availability is effectively unlimited, with roughly 48.8 million shares available to borrow and utilisation at just 0.09%. The short score of 25.3 has drifted only slightly lower over the past two weeks, and remains consistent with negligible structural short interest. Bears, in other words, are not piling in even as the price collapses.
The one borrow-market signal worth watching is the cost-to-borrow spike. Lending fees jumped to 2.4% on July 27, up nearly fourfold from roughly 0.5% earlier in the week — a sharp move, even if the absolute level remains low. The 52-week peak in utilisation has been only 1.9%, confirming that ASM has never been a contested borrow at any point in the past year. The CTB spike more likely reflects end-of-month settlement mechanics or short-term positioning around the earnings date than any structural bear build.
The debate heading into the print is framed by a wide gap between the recent share price and where analysts have pegged fair value. The consensus price target stands at €1,053 — implying roughly 39% upside from current levels. That target is current, struck as recently as July 23. Against that, the stock is trading at a P/E of 31 and an EV/EBITDA of 21.8, both of which have compressed sharply: the P/E has dropped nearly 7 points over the past 30 days as the stock fell. The most recent ORTEX note flagged record Q2 revenue of €1.96 billion and a full-year guidance raise, suggesting the fundamental story has not deteriorated. EPS surprise ranks in the 69th percentile — above average but not dominant. Forward EPS momentum on a 12-month basis ranks in just the 11th percentile, meaning analysts have been trimming long-run estimates even as the near-term beat record holds. Bulls point to ASM's structural position in atomic layer deposition as irreplaceable for advanced node chip manufacturing. Bears would note the valuation re-rating still has further to run if capital spending cycles in AI and data centres soften.
Institutional ownership adds a nuanced layer. BlackRock holds 8.6% of shares and added 76,000 shares through June, while Amundi added 242,000 shares as recently as late June — both moves suggesting large passive and active managers were still building positions as the stock was declining from its highs. Tokyo Electron holds a strategic 4.7% stake with no recent change, a sign of structural alignment. On the insider front, the CEO sold over €7 million worth of shares across multiple transactions in early May, and the CFO net sold as well after a small partial buy — though these trades came when the stock was trading near €880, well above current levels.
Today's print tests whether the record Q2 revenue and guidance raise are enough to arrest a derating that has been driven by sector-level risk appetite rather than company-specific news — and whether the 39% gap between price and consensus target reflects analyst conviction or analyst inertia.
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