NCH2 is caught in a persistent contradiction: the stock is quietly drifting higher while its lending market remains one of the most stressed in the European universe.
The borrow picture has not materially eased since the earlier note this week. Availability is still essentially exhausted — only 2% of short interest has shares left to borrow, up from a 52-week floor of 0.01% but still leaving fewer than one share available for every 50 already lent out. Cost to borrow has been erratic rather than directionally resolving: after hitting 340% on July 31 and again on August 5, it settled near 99% on August 10. That is not a relaxation — it is a volatile lending pool with almost no depth, where small demand swings send rates swinging triple digits. The ORTEX short score reached 95.5 on August 11, its highest reading in the 10-day history shown, rising every single session since July 29. Both the utilization rank and the days-to-cover rank sit at the lowest percentile in the ORTEX universe. The borrow market is not tightening further from here — it has been near maximum stress for weeks.
What makes this unusual is the direction of the stock. NCH2 closed at €8.05, up roughly 1.8% on the week and 6.8% over the past month. That upward drift, with borrow availability near zero and costs still elevated, runs against the grain of what heavily-shorted names typically do under this kind of lending pressure. Shorts are largely locked in — the cost of initiating new positions is prohibitive, and the lending pool offers almost no room for fresh entrants. Existing shorts face carry costs that have averaged well above 50% for most of the past six weeks. The stock moving up, even modestly, in that context means the pain is accumulating on the short side rather than being resolved.
The Street is not in agreement on how to resolve that tension. The consensus price target sits at €10.52, implying roughly 31% above the current price. That gap is meaningful for a stock trading below book value — the price-to-book multiple stands near 1.38. But the fundamental picture is still deeply negative: the company is loss-making, with EV/EBITDA and P/E both deep in negative territory. EPS momentum factor scores rank in the bottom 1-2 percentiles of the universe over both 30- and 90-day windows. The forward EPS trajectory is recovering from a very low base, but the near-term earnings power is not there yet. The next scheduled results event is December 16.
Today's earnings release — thyssenkrupp nucera published results on August 12 — is the immediate catalyst to watch. The May print produced a 7.3% single-day gain and held most of that through the following week, finishing up 5.7%. Whether the August numbers replicate that dynamic, and whether the borrow market shows any meaningful loosening in the sessions that follow, will be the clearest signal of where this tension is heading next.
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