XPeng heads into its August 24 earnings report with short sellers quietly retreating, borrow conditions loosening, and a stock that has shed 8% over the past month to $12.05 — a setup where the lending market and price action are telling different stories.
The clearest shift over the past six weeks is in how aggressively bears are positioning. Short interest peaked near 54.5 million shares in early July, then dropped sharply around July 24, shedding roughly 8 million shares in a single session. It has since stabilised near 44.2 million. That's a meaningful pullback in directional conviction from shorts. Borrowing costs confirm the retreat — cost to borrow has more than halved from a July 7 peak of 1.75% to roughly 1%, near its 30-day low. Availability has swung dramatically in the same direction: a month ago, fewer than 11% of lendable shares remained unborrowed, a near-fully-tapped pool. Now nearly 49% of the borrow pool is available — still tight by historical standards (the 52-week low touched 0.27%), but a genuine loosening from what was a very constrained market. Options positioning adds little signal either way, with the put/call ratio at 0.35, essentially flat to its 20-day average and near the lower end of its 52-week range — call-heavy rather than defensive.
The Street is more divided. Barclays trimmed its target to $15 in mid-July while keeping an Underweight — still above the current $12.05 price, but a vote of limited confidence. Macquarie, which upgraded to Outperform in late May, holds a $19 target, implying meaningful upside from current levels. The analyst consensus mean sits at a level that appears materially above the current price, though the range of views is wide and reflects genuine disagreement on XPeng's trajectory. On valuation, the EV/EBITDA multiple has compressed about 15% over 30 days to 34x — a move that reflects a cheaper entry point on paper, but the PE at 99x underlines how far the company still is from the earnings power that would justify that multiple. Factor scores point to the core tension: EPS surprise ranks in the 96th percentile, meaning the company has consistently beaten estimates, but 30-day and 90-day EPS momentum scores are near the bottom of the universe at 21 and 3 respectively — beats are in the rearview, and forward revisions have been heading the wrong way. The short score of 65.4 is elevated, placing XPEV in the bottom 8% of all stocks on that metric.
Institutional ownership shows some quiet accumulation. Goldman Sachs added roughly 3.8 million shares in the quarter to June 30, bringing its holding to 26.5 million shares. BlackRock added 1.1 million in the same period. Neither is a dramatic move in the context of the stock's float, but the direction of two large passive and active managers is incrementally constructive. Founder and CEO Xiaopeng He retains an 18.8% stake, providing a meaningful alignment of interest between management and long-term holders.
The May earnings print offers a limited template: the stock barely moved the next day, then posted a 2.2% five-day gain — a muted reaction in either direction. The prior event in February produced a 4.4% one-day decline before recovering 6% over the following week. Neither episode was particularly violent, suggesting the stock tends to absorb results without dramatic gaps.
Close peers had a mixed week: NIO managed a 1.7% gain while LI fell 2.6%, roughly matching XPEV's 5.2% decline. RIVN dropped 5.6%, suggesting the broader EV-adjacent trade was under pressure rather than XPeng-specific selling.
With the August 24 print approaching, the key watch points are whether short interest continues its six-week retreat or rebuilds ahead of the report, and whether EPS estimate revisions show any stabilisation — the factor scores suggest that dynamic, not the earnings headline itself, may be the more telling signal for how positioning evolves into the release.
See the live data behind this article on ORTEX.
Open XPEV 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.
