Century Aluminum heads into its Q2 earnings print today with short sellers meaningfully positioned — but the borrow market showing no signs of stress.
Short interest has climbed sharply over the past month, rising nearly 17% to reach 10.6% of the free float, a genuinely elevated level for an industrial metals name. That build has been steady and deliberate: shorts added roughly 1.4 million shares between late June and mid-July, then held their position flat through August. Despite the size of the position, the lending market is far from tight — availability runs at 917%, meaning there are roughly nine shares available to borrow for every one already shorted. Borrowing costs are low at 0.49% and have eased 15% over the past week. The infrastructure for a squeeze simply isn't there. Options positioning has nudged slightly more defensive heading into the print, with the put/call ratio at 0.47, running modestly above its 20-day average — a z-score of 1.5 suggests mild caution rather than outright fear. The stock itself closed at $45.95, off 2% on the day but up 2.4% on the week, a choppy pattern that reflects genuine uncertainty about the direction of the cycle.
The bull and bear cases are anchored to very different reads on the aluminum macro. Bulls point to an earnings-surprise track record that ranks in the top 11% of the market, and a forward valuation that looks undemanding — the stock trades at roughly 4.3x trailing earnings and under 4x EV/EBITDA, leaving room for re-rating if the company delivers. B. Riley trimmed its target to $74 from $86 in early July, still implying substantial upside from current levels. Wells Fargo has been consistently adding to its Overweight thesis through the first half of 2026, most recently at a $79 target following the Q1 print. The mean consensus target of $74 sits well above the current price — a gap that reflects Street optimism, but also the stock's retreat from its March highs near the mid-$50s. Bears note that the 30-day EV/EBITDA has actually expanded rather than compressed, and that short-term EPS momentum — ranked in just the 9th percentile — points to slowing near-term estimate revisions. The CEO sold $8.3 million of stock in March, and multiple other executives liquidated shares around the same time; while this cluster is now several months old, it adds a note of caution about insider conviction at elevated prices.
One ownership detail stands out: Glencore holds nearly 30% of shares outstanding and sold 6.3 million shares in March — a $327 million block — yet still sits as the dominant anchor shareholder. That dynamic matters for liquidity and for reading any future secondary activity. FMR (Fidelity) is the most active recent institutional buyer among the top holders, adding nearly its entire current position in the last reporting period, a signal that at least one large institution has been building conviction on the recent weakness.
The print will test whether Century Aluminum's cost structure and realized pricing can justify the gap between where the stock trades and where analysts think it should — and whether the month-long short build was prescient or premature.
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