Angel Studios: Borrow Loosens as Shorts Quietly Rebuild

ANGX heads into its September 25 earnings date with short interest quietly creeping higher, an unusually call-heavy options market, and a stock that has recovered some ground after a rough post-earnings stretch — a setup that rewards watching more than chasing.

Short interest has risen about 4% week-on-week to 4.4% of the free float, and is up nearly 15% over the past month. That is a steady, unhurried build rather than an aggressive pile-on. The borrow market tells a similar story: cost to borrow has drifted down sharply from above 3% in early July to roughly 1.9% now, its lowest level in the observable window. Availability is extremely loose at over 2,500% — meaning there are far more shares available to lend than currently borrowed — so this is not a squeeze setup and there is no friction discouraging new short positions. The 52-week peak availability was 76%, against the current reading well above that, confirming the lending pool is deep and ample. Shorts can enter and exit freely. The ORTEX short score of 41 is middling and has drifted slightly lower over the past two weeks, suggesting no urgent escalation in bearish conviction.

Options positioning tells the opposite story. The put/call ratio is running at a near-record low of just 0.03 — far below its already-low 20-day average of 0.034 — meaning the options market is almost entirely calls. This extreme call-skew has been building since mid-July, when the PCR was above 0.12. That steady compression reflects either genuine bullish conviction from options traders, or simply thin put activity in a thinly-traded name. Either way, there is almost no hedging interest visible in the options market right now.

The Street is uniformly constructive, though coverage is thin and the most recent action is from late June. B. Riley lifted its target to $8 from $7 while reiterating Buy. Maxim Group and Roth Capital both carry $9 targets with Buy ratings. Against a current price of $4.37, the mean analyst target implies roughly 83% upside — a gap that reflects either genuine undervaluation or the Street's struggle to model a faith-based independent studio with deeply negative EBITDA and near-zero FCF. The EV/EBITDA multiple is negative at around -81, and the PE is similarly negative, so traditional valuation anchors are not operational here. Factor scores offer limited additional texture, with a sector-relative score of 50 — squarely in the middle of the pack.

The most concrete bullish signal in the data is an insider purchase from early May: director Steven Sarowitz bought over 321,000 shares at $3.06 apiece, committing roughly $983,000 of his own capital. That purchase was made when the stock was trading more than 30% below current levels, and it represents the only meaningful open-market buy in the recent record. No C-suite names appear in the buy column, and recent insider activity has otherwise been limited to routine equity awards. Gigafund holds 10.4% and has not moved its position. Both Jeffrey and Neal Harmon each trimmed about 5 million shares as of late June, a reduction worth watching for follow-through in subsequent filings.

The last earnings print, on August 5, produced a -3.6% next-day move and a painful -17.5% over the following five sessions — a pattern that is not unusual for the stock. The prior quarter produced a +9.9% day-one reaction followed by a +5.5% five-day gain. ANGX has shown it can swing hard in either direction after results. With the next event scheduled for September 25, the weeks ahead will show whether the slow short rebuild and the loosening borrow market reflect growing conviction in a fade, or simply a lack of catalysts to move positioning in either direction.