STLAM has fallen nearly 5% this week to €4.75, underperforming most of its European automotive peers — and the gap between where the stock trades and where the lending market thinks it deserves to go is widening in a way worth tracking.
The most notable development this week is in the ORTEX short score, which has climbed sharply from 43 at the start of August to 56.5. That's a meaningful move in under two weeks, driven primarily by price weakness and deteriorating momentum signals. The score peaked at 59.5 on August 10 before easing slightly — but the directional shift from mid-40s to mid-50s reflects a real change in how the data characterises the stock's risk profile. The borrow market, by contrast, tells a calmer story. Availability is running at 314% — roughly three shares available to lend for every one already borrowed — meaning the lending pool is far from stressed. Cost to borrow has drifted down through the week to just 0.82%, near its lowest level of the past month and a half. There's no mechanical short squeeze pressure here.
Short interest is low and does not drive this narrative. With the stock's free float barely on loan and availability this loose, the positioning story is about price weakness, not crowded shorts. What makes the week more interesting is the peer divergence. eked out a small gain on the week at +0.5%. closed effectively flat. and both fell, but by less than Stellantis — MBG down roughly 3% and VOW3 down 1.9%. Stellantis's near-5% drop on the week stands out even in a sector under pressure.
The Street's read on the stock is mixed but not catastrophically negative. The mean analyst price target sits at €5.92 — implying around 25% upside from current levels — though there have been no recent target changes to update that picture. The valuation is striking in its cheapness: price-to-book at 0.24, EV/EBITDA at 2.8, and a PE ratio below 5. These are distressed-business multiples on a company that is not technically distressed — but they reflect a market that has stopped giving Stellantis the benefit of the doubt on margin recovery. The factor score picture reinforces the caution: EPS surprise ranks in the 15th percentile, meaning the company has been repeatedly missing estimates, and the short score rank at the 12th percentile flags that the ORTEX signal is behaving defensively.
The earnings history adds relevant context. At the July 30 results, the stock fell 6.2% on the day and shed a further 7.9% over the following five sessions. The prior print, in May, produced the opposite — a 1.1% day-one gain that extended to an 8.7% five-day rally. With the next event not until October 28, there is no immediate catalyst on the horizon, but the pattern of outsized post-earnings moves — in either direction — means that setup will matter when it arrives.
On the ownership side, the structure is notably concentrated. Lingotto Investment Management holds 15.5% of shares, Établissements Peugeot Frères 7.7%, and Bpifrance a further 6.6%. These are strategic anchor holders unlikely to shift. Among more active holders, Goldman Sachs added over 13 million shares as of early July, and Merrill Lynch added nearly 25 million shares in the most recent reported period — both moves suggesting some institutional interest even as the price has continued to drift lower. The insider picture, by contrast, saw broad-based selling in June at prices around €7.76 — well above where the stock trades now — though the values involved were modest and the trades carry low significance scores.
The next real test is whether the short score stabilises below 60, or whether continued price weakness pushes it into territory that starts attracting more deliberate short positioning — the borrow market currently leaves that door wide open.
See the live data behind this article on ORTEX.
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