JSW — Jastrzębska Spółka Węglowa — has delivered a 4% gain on the week, yet the short positioning picture has barely softened: with availability still near historically tight levels and the short score holding well above its mid-week trough, the price rally and the bear thesis are running in parallel rather than resolving each other.
The lending market tells a story of renewed pressure. Availability has fallen back to 5.6% — roughly eighteen shares lent out for every one still free to borrow — after recovering briefly toward 8% in the days before Monday. That 32% single-week deterioration in availability is the fastest tightening seen in the current run-up to earnings, and it brings the pool back toward the 2.9% floor hit on July 14, which remains the tightest reading of the past year. Cost to borrow has edged back up to 8.3% after dipping to 6.7% on July 31, retracing nearly all of last week's brief relief. Both metrics confirm what the previous two notes identified: any loosening has been tactical, not structural. The short score itself reinforces this. After bouncing from its July 27 record of 85.6 down to 72.8, it has rebounded to 76.4 as of Tuesday — still placing JSW in the 1st percentile of its universe on the short score rank, with days-to-cover and utilization ranks anchored in the bottom 3rd percentile.
The valuation backdrop offers the clearest counter-argument to the bear case. JSW trades at just 6.1x trailing earnings and 2.4x EV/EBITDA — both multiples that, on any normalised coking coal cycle, look undemanding. The price-to-book ratio is 0.48, meaning the stock changes hands at less than half its net asset value. The EPS momentum scores are extraordinary: the 30-day reading ranks in the 100th percentile and the 90-day in the 98th, signalling a dramatic upward revision cycle in forward estimates that has not yet translated into price recovery. Analyst data is too stale to be actionable — the most recent mean target of PLN 22.25 predates the current earnings revision cycle by several months and sits below the current price of PLN 26.12, so it should be treated with caution. The factor picture is therefore a genuine tension: cheap on fundamentals, strong on earnings revisions, deeply out of favour with short sellers.
Ownership is dominated by the Polish state, which controls 55% of shares. That concentration matters for two reasons: it limits the free float available to borrow, which amplifies the structural tightness in the lending pool, and it caps the stock's sensitivity to international institutional flows. BlackRock added roughly 35,000 shares to its position through June, and American Century added 57,000 — modest increments, but directionally constructive against a backdrop of overall negative sentiment.
The most recent earnings history adds texture. The May 19 print produced a 2.4% one-day decline followed by an 8.3% five-session recovery — a pattern where the initial reaction was negative but the stock found buyers in the days that followed. The August 20 release is now fifteen days away. With borrow this tight and the short score re-accelerating from its mid-week pause, the gap between what the fundamentals appear to say and what the positioning data reflects will be the central question as that date approaches.
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