CDE Options Flash Bullish Before Q2 Print

Coeur Mining heads into its August 5 Q2 earnings report with options traders taking an unusually bullish stance — a striking divergence from the stock's recent price weakness.

The clearest signal is in options positioning. The put/call ratio dropped to 0.32 on July 31, nearly four and a half standard deviations below its 20-day average of 0.43. That is the most call-heavy reading in the past year, with the 52-week low sitting at 0.22. Traders are loading up on upside exposure even as the stock has pulled back 8.6% over the past month to close at $14.91, with a further 3.2% drop on July 31 alone. The disconnect between price action and options sentiment is the defining tension heading into the print.

Short interest adds a less alarming dimension to the setup. Bears hold roughly 7.9% of the free float — meaningful, but the position has shrunk by more than half over the past month, down 54% from late June levels. The borrow market is exceptionally loose: availability runs at 1,663%, meaning shares to lend vastly outnumber those already borrowed, and the cost to borrow remains near negligible at 0.46%. Shorts face no structural squeeze pressure here. The week-on-week CTB rise of 38% sounds dramatic but only brings it from an extremely low base to one that remains among the cheapest borrows in the market.

Analysts and large institutional buyers are broadly aligned on the bull side. The Street consensus is a buy, with a mean price target around $28 — implying roughly 88% upside from the current price. Scotiabank raised its target to $28.50 in mid-July, maintaining a Sector Outperform. Canaccord upgraded to Buy in April. The bull case rests on Q2 operational strength: gold output of 108.5 koz and silver of 4.7 Moz beat forecasts, the $110 million revolving credit facility is fully repaid, and net leverage has collapsed from 2.9x a year ago to 0.4x. Institutional investors reinforced the optimistic read — BlackRock added 35 million shares in Q2 to hold 11.7% of the company, while FMR and State Street each added more than 10 million shares over the same period. The bear case centres on valuation sustainability: the stock has fallen sharply from February highs near $27, and if EV/EBITDA multiples contract further from the current 4.5x, the gap to analyst targets narrows quickly. EPS momentum ranks in only the 8th percentile on a 90-day basis, signalling estimate cuts rather than upgrades in recent months.