GRPN is down 20% on the week and trading at $21.87 — yet the short base that has defined this name all summer has barely moved, and the borrow market that was nearly shut before earnings has only partially reopened.
The most significant development since the last note is not the price decline. It is the partial easing of availability — and what that easing has not yet done to short positioning. Availability has climbed from the catastrophic 0.63% reading flagged in Monday's note to 8.2% as of Tuesday's close. That is still well below normal — roughly eight shares available for every hundred already borrowed — but it is meaningfully less extreme than the near-total lockout that persisted through the earnings week. The improvement is real. However, short interest has moved in the opposite direction from what an easing borrow market might imply: it rose 3.6% in a single day on August 11, reaching 33.3% of free float — 13.56 million shares — the highest level in the entire tracking window. Bears are not covering into the price weakness. They are adding.
Cost to borrow tells a complementary story. It has fallen sharply — down 39% on the week to 1.43% — reflecting the slight loosening of lending supply. But the fall in borrow cost alongside rising short interest is not the signal it might initially appear. It simply means the marginal cost of holding a short position is cheaper, not that bears are exiting. The ORTEX short score has ticked to 78.8, its highest point across the full history visible in this snapshot, up from 78.2 the week prior. Days-to-cover remains 9.5 sessions per the most recent FINRA fortnightly count. The mechanical exit problem is, if anything, marginally worse than it was before the print.
The Street offers little resolution to the tension. The analyst picture is sharply divided. Goldman Sachs has maintained a Sell rating with a $13 target — raised from $10 in May but still less than 60% of the current price. The bullish side, from Northland Capital Markets and Roth Capital, holds targets in the $44-$47 range, nearly double where the stock trades today. The mean target of $29.33 sits roughly 34% above the current price, but the dispersion between the Goldman $13 and the bullish $44-$47 range is so wide as to be nearly meaningless as a consensus signal. The bull case — strong operational leverage, accelerating cash conversion, and potential EBITDA reacceleration in the back half of 2025 — now collides with a management guidance set that explicitly pointed to revenue declines of 5-7.5% and EBITDA contraction. Valuation multiples have compressed meaningfully: the PE ratio has fallen roughly 3 turns over the past week to 12.1x, and EV/EBITDA has pulled in nearly a full turn to 10.3x. These are not demanding multiples, but they price in a recovery that guidance does not endorse.
The ownership picture adds another layer of complexity. Pale Fire Capital SE holds 25% of shares. CEO Dusan Senkypl sold 1.35 million shares at $16.54 on June 11 — a $22.3 million transaction — yet his reported position still shows a net 2.06 million share increase over the filing period, reflecting prior accumulation. The CFO sold a token $186,000 worth of stock on July 30 following an award, routine in nature. The insider picture is not a clean directional signal, but the CEO monetizing at $16.54 — a level the stock has now fallen back toward after briefly reaching $27 — is worth noting in the context of where the stock trades today.
Options positioning has eased from the more defensive stance visible into earnings. The put/call ratio is 0.39, just slightly above its 20-day average of 0.37, with a z-score of 0.64 — neither extreme nor alarming. The market is not pricing in panic. The 52-week high on the PCR was 0.86; the current reading is near the bottom of the annual range. That calm sits in uncomfortable juxtaposition with 33% short interest and a borrow market still operating with single-digit availability.
What to watch next is whether the partial reopening of the borrow market translates into actual covering — or whether bears, now cheaper to carry than a week ago, simply hold and extend into the November earnings date. The divergence between falling borrow cost and rising short interest is the structural tension the next few sessions will test.
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