NCH2 emerges from the most dramatic week in its recent history with a shrunken short position, stubbornly tight borrow conditions, and earnings fourteen days out.
The structural story shifted on July 28. Short interest dropped from 15.84% to 7.84% of free float in a single session — roughly 1.8 million shares covered — the largest one-day reduction in this dataset. That halving followed the July 27 peak in new-loan borrowing costs, which reached 147.4% APR, the highest recorded level for this stock. The math was simple: holding a short at those rates is ruinously expensive, and the exodus proved it. Costs have since pulled back to 107.3% on July 28, a real retreat from the extreme, but the blended rate remains well above where it spent most of June, when new-loan costs ran in the 17%–47% range.
The lending market tells the same story from a different angle — the squeeze conditions that drove covers have not resolved. Availability has tightened back to 1.28%, meaning barely one share remains free to borrow for every hundred already lent out. That is up fractionally from the July 17 low of 1.16%, but the pool has spent the entirety of July pinned below 2%. The 52-week minimum availability was 0.014% — a near-total freeze — and the market has not moved far from that level structurally. Any fresh short demand at these depths will immediately reprice the cost upward again, which is the same dynamic that produced the 147% spike in the first place.
The ORTEX short score has eased to 90.6 from a recent peak of 97.1, which reflects the reduction in short interest more than any fundamental change in lending structure. Factor ranks remain extreme: the short score rank, days-to-cover rank, and utilisation rank all score at or near zero percentile, meaning this stock sits among the most pressured names in the universe on every lending metric. EPS momentum over 30 and 90 days scores in the first and second percentiles respectively — the fundamental backdrop has not improved. The analyst consensus price target of €10.62 sits roughly 40% above the current €7.60, but no analyst changes have been filed in the past two weeks, so the Street's view is current but static.
Ownership offers some context for why the remaining short book may be stickier than the first half. Thyssenkrupp Projekt 1 GmbH holds 50.2% of shares, Federico De Nora holds 25.9%, and the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia holds 6%. Combined, the three anchor holders account for over 82% of the register. That concentration compresses the actual tradeable float dramatically, which is precisely why the lending pool reached near-zero availability — there simply are not many shares available to borrow regardless of demand levels. The shorts that remain after the July 28 mass cover are operating in a pool that was never deep to begin with.
The earnings print on August 12 is now the defining event. The last four results produced same-day moves of between +2.7% and +7.3%, all positive — a pattern that may partly reflect the mechanical dynamic of covering into results rather than fundamental beats. What to watch between now and then is whether the remaining 7.84% short position continues to unwind at current borrowing costs, or whether 107% APR proves tolerable enough for committed bears to hold into the announcement.
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