Nebius Group heads into its August 12 earnings print with a striking new development: options traders have flipped decisively bullish even as short sellers hold their ground at nearly 29% of the float.
The sharpest shift this week is in options sentiment. The put/call ratio has dropped to 0.96 — more than two standard deviations below its 20-day average of 1.15 — making this one of the most call-heavy readings of the past year. The contrast with the prior month is stark. Through most of July the PCR ran above 1.20, touching its 52-week high of 1.30 as recently as July 30. That defensive overhang has unwound completely in two sessions. Options traders who spent July buying downside protection ahead of the July 28 print have pivoted to chasing upside into the next one.
The borrow market tells a more complicated story. The August 5 note documented availability snapping back to roughly 10% after briefly recovering to 45% post-earnings — and that tightness has held. Availability remains near 10%, against a 52-week low of 0.63%, with the pool having touched zero as recently as late July. Cost to borrow has climbed to 1.26%, a six-week high and up a third on the week. Short interest itself is static — up just 0.3% on the week to 28.9% of float — which means the entire 21% monthly build remains in place. These shorts are deeply offside against a stock up 33% in a week and nearly doubled since June. The ORTEX short score has barely moved, holding 70.8–71.1 for two straight weeks. That stability in the face of a violent price move is notable: bears are not capitulating, and borrow demand is absorbing whatever availability surfaces.
The Street is leaning constructive but with wide dispersion. Piper Sandler initiated coverage this week at Neutral with a $224 target — essentially at-market. Baird started at Outperform with a $250 target two weeks ago. At the bullish extreme, Northland raised its target to $410 on July 20, citing the company's vertically integrated AI cloud infrastructure and a $17 billion revenue agreement with Microsoft. Morgan Stanley sits at Equal-Weight with a $144 target — the most skeptical major-firm view on the board. The mean consensus target of $255 implies roughly 13% upside from current levels, a modest premium for a stock that has already moved this much. The bull case centers on scarcity value in specialized AI compute and asset-light GPU partnerships. Bears point to declining ASPs, margin pressure from expansion capex, limited management depth in data center operations, and lingering questions around the company's history as a former Russian internet group.
On the factor side, EPS momentum ranks in the 99th percentile on a 30-day basis, a reflection of rapid estimate upgrades following the May earnings beat. The analyst recommendation differential also ranks near the top of the universe at the 98th percentile. But the short score rank sits at the 5th percentile — one of the most extreme short setups in the market — and the EPS surprise factor ranks at just the 5th percentile, suggesting the company has not historically cleared the bar on a reported basis. That combination — strong momentum and analyst enthusiasm against weak earnings execution history and extreme short positioning — frames exactly the tension heading into August 12.
Among correlated peers, BGDE added 22% on the week and IREN gained 20%. CORZ was up roughly 10%. The AI compute infrastructure trade broadly caught a bid — but NBIS at 33% led them all, amplified by the short positioning that forces covering when the stock moves. CIFR bucked the move, falling more than 15% on the day, underscoring that the sector bid is not uniform.
The next key data point is the August 12 earnings release. The last two prints produced a 21% single-day drop followed by a 23% single-day gain — the reaction range is wide in both directions, and what matters now is whether the reported numbers give the options market, which has just swung sharply to calls, the confirmation it is pricing in.
See the live data behind this article on ORTEX.
Open NBIS on ORTEX →ORTEX Market Intelligence content is generated by AI from a snapshot of ORTEX's proprietary data. Content is informational only and does not constitute investment advice.
