Macerich Heads Into Earnings With Bears Dug In But Borrow Loose

MAC reports Q2 results today with short sellers maintaining a meaningful presence in the stock — yet borrow conditions suggest little urgency to press the position harder.

Short interest is real and has been building. At 8.3% of the free float, MAC's short position has grown 15% over the past month to roughly 21.3 million shares. That monthly increase is the most notable feature of the positioning picture — not a panic scramble, but a steady, deliberate accumulation by bears. Despite that build, the borrow market remains comfortable. Availability runs near 467% of short interest, well above even the 52-week trough of 351%, and cost to borrow is just 0.43% — down 10% on the week. This is not a stock where shorts are squeezed for supply. The lending pool is large relative to what has been borrowed, and getting in or out of a short is cheap. Options traders, meanwhile, are leaning the opposite way: the put/call ratio at 0.36 is near its 52-week low of 0.33, slightly below its 20-day average. The bias is toward calls, not downside protection.

Bulls and bears are arguing about fundamentally different versions of the same balance sheet. The bull case rests on leasing momentum — nearly 2.9 million square feet of anchor and big-box replacements committed, expected to drive roughly $750 million in tenant sales — combined with ongoing deleveraging through asset sales and NOI growth. Forward EPS growth ranks in the 81st percentile of the universe, and the dividend score sits at a similarly elevated 81st. Analysts have broadly lifted targets heading into the print: Piper Sandler raised its target to $28 just two weeks ago, Citigroup upgraded to Buy in late June with a $28 target, and JP Morgan moved off Underweight in mid-June. Most moves have been in the same direction, though few carry outright conviction — the consensus sits at $26.19, barely above MAC's close of $25.62. The bear case centres on leverage. The debt maturity schedule is short, funding costs are rising, and the bears argue that even a 7% FFO-per-share growth trajectory — modest for a stock trading well below replacement cost of implied ~$474 per square foot — won't close the valuation gap fast enough to matter. The ORTEX short score of 54.6, in the bottom 10th percentile of its sector, reflects that ambivalence.

The peer group offers useful context. SPG fell just 1.1% on the week, KIM dropped 3.7%, and KRG lost 5.0%. MAC's 3.4% weekly decline puts it in the middle of the peer pack — not the worst performer, but still moving with the broader sector softness rather than outperforming it. That's notable given the stock's 40% year-to-date rally, which was driven by portfolio-transformation optimism. Recent earnings history adds a small wrinkle: the last two prints both saw the stock dip on the day before recovering over five sessions, with the June print down 1.2% on day one but up 3.9% over the following week.

The print will test whether MAC's leasing pipeline is translating into hard FFO numbers that justify the re-rating the stock has already received — and whether the balance sheet story is improving fast enough to keep the short sellers from adding further.