Groupon Bears Hold Firm as the Slide Continues

GRPN has now fallen 27% in a month and 11.5% in a week, closing at $20.30 — yet the short base is not only intact, it has grown, and the borrow market that briefly loosened after the Q2 print is tightening again.

The positioning story is the clearest thing on this tape. Short interest has climbed to 32.9% of free float — roughly 13.4 million shares — up 1.3% on the week and 9.6% over the past month. That trajectory is consistent with what the previous two notes described: bears were not covering into post-earnings weakness, and they are still not covering now. Availability, which had recovered to 14.6% as recently as August 14, has slipped back to 7.4% — fewer than eight shares available for every hundred already borrowed. The 52-week low was 0.37%, so the borrow market is not at peak stress, but the directional move is unmistakable: availability fell 34% in a single week. Cost to borrow remains modest at 2.15%, up just 0.6% on the week, which tells you lenders are not yet charging a panic premium — but the shrinking pool of available shares is the more important signal here. The ORTEX short score has ticked up to 79.0, a new high for the recent tracking window, confirming that the quantitative picture is deteriorating, not stabilising.

Options traders are not adding much pressure from the downside protection side. The put/call ratio is 0.37, effectively in line with its 20-day average of 0.38 and close to its 52-week low of 0.31. That is the one signal that diverges from the bearish consensus — call volume is dominating options flow, which implies at least a subset of market participants is positioned for a bounce rather than further decline. Whether that reflects genuine conviction or mechanical hedging against existing short positions is impossible to determine from the ratio alone.

The Street is sharply divided, and the divide has been consistent for months. Goldman Sachs maintained its Sell rating as recently as May, raising its target to $13 — well below the current $20.30 price. Northland Capital and Roth Capital both carry Buy-equivalent ratings with targets that were set at much higher levels in mid-2025, which now look stale given the stock's subsequent trajectory. The mean analyst target of $30.67 implies meaningful upside from here, but that figure is being pulled up by optimistic targets set before the summer selloff, and the most recent bellwether action points the other way. The ORTEX short score rank of 3 out of 100 and the EV/EBIT factor rank of 2 reflect a name that scores poorly on valuation and short-interest pressure by almost any systematic measure. The PE multiple has compressed by 3.99 points over the past month, tracking the price decline, while EV/EBITDA has fallen to around 10.1x — the multiple is shrinking, but that is a function of a falling stock rather than improving earnings momentum.

The ownership picture adds one more wrinkle. CEO Dusan Senkypl sold 1.35 million shares at $16.54 in June — a $22.3 million transaction — and still holds 7% of the company. Pale Fire Capital, the largest institutional holder at 25% of shares, made no change in its most recent filing. The insider selling happened at prices well below current levels, but the transaction was large enough to note: the CEO reduced his position materially even before the Q2 earnings drop, and the CFO followed with a smaller sale at $27.89 on July 30. Net insider activity over the past 90 days is technically positive in share terms — driven by stock awards rather than open-market purchases — which makes the net figure misleading as a sentiment read.

The next earnings event is not until November 6, leaving a long stretch without a fundamental catalyst. The stock has now posted two consecutive post-earnings declines of more than 8% on the day and roughly 15–19% over the following five sessions, a pattern that is worth keeping in mind as the next print approaches. What to watch between now and then: whether availability continues its renewed tightening toward the near-zero readings seen earlier in August, and whether short interest crosses decisively above 33% of free float as the stock tests new lows.