ESTA Shorts Hold Firm But Bulls Lift Targets Ahead of Wednesday Print

Establishment Labs Holdings heads into its August 5 earnings report with a substantial short position, rising analyst conviction, and options traders leaning notably bullish — a combination that sets up a charged read on the quarterly numbers.

Short sellers remain heavily committed to the trade. At 15.2% of the free float, short interest is genuinely elevated and has climbed roughly 13% over the past month, even as the past week saw a 5.7% pullback in shares shorted. Days to cover run at 8.5, meaning any squeeze would take meaningful time to unwind. Yet the borrow market tells a less urgent story: availability has loosened sharply, with roughly 193% of current short interest available to borrow — down from even higher levels last week but well within normal range. Borrowing costs are running below 1%, up around 12% on the week but still historically cheap. Shorts are dug in, but they are not fighting over scarce stock.

Options traders are leaning the other way. The put/call ratio of 0.45 is fractionally below its 20-day average of 0.47, close to the lowest readings of the past year — and far from the defensive stance that sometimes clusters into a print. Call positioning dominates, aligning with analyst upgrades. TD Cowen raised its target to $117 from $95 just yesterday, while Mizuho and Citigroup both lifted targets through July. The mean Street target now sits at $97, a touch above the current $92.80 close, suggesting the consensus sees modest further upside but is not running ahead of itself. The bull case centers on revenue growth above 34% year-on-year, the Preservé minimally invasive platform gaining traction, and management having already raised full-year 2026 guidance. Bears counter with the industry's history of adverse events and the execution risk of expanding through a relatively concentrated sales force into markets like the US and China.

One note on institutional ownership: BlackRock added nearly 1.45 million shares in the quarter ended June 30, lifting its stake to around 5.4% — a meaningful new commitment. T. Rowe Price initiated a position of nearly 977,000 shares over the same period. Running against that, the company's largest holder, JW Asset Management, trimmed steadily in May at prices around $70-75 — well below current levels — and still holds 9.1% of shares. The founder Juan José Chacón Quirós also sold around 105,000 shares near those same May levels, reducing his disclosed stake. That insider and large-holder selling happened into a stock that has since rallied roughly 25%, which partially explains the short score of 72.6 — elevated, but off the mid-July peak above 76.

Wednesday's print will test whether the revenue growth rate and EBITDA trajectory justify the multiple — an EV/EBITDA of 79x that has compressed by around 6 turns over the past month — and whether management's confidence in the Preservé rollout translates into numbers that can hold the renewed institutional interest in place against a short base that has not yet moved.