Li Auto's Borrow Market Is Nearly Maxed Out Ahead of Wednesday's Print

Li Auto heads into its August 26 earnings release with the lending market for its shares running at near-maximum tightness — a striking backdrop for a stock that has quietly rallied 7% over the past week.

Borrow availability has been effectively exhausted for most of August. The availability ratio — shares still lendable relative to those already borrowed — touched 3.8% as recently as August 14, meaning fewer than four shares remained available for every hundred already out on loan. It has since loosened fractionally to 5.8%, but that still ranks among the tightest readings of the year; the 52-week low hit 0.04%. Cost to borrow has climbed roughly 18% over the past week to around 1.93%, reflecting that squeeze on supply. Meanwhile the ORTEX short score has crept higher every session this week, reaching 63.8 — its highest reading in the available history — signalling that the overall short-selling setup remains elevated heading into the print. Options positioning, by contrast, is not especially defensive: the put/call ratio of 0.82 is slightly below its 20-day average, suggesting options traders are not aggressively hedging.

The analyst community has spent much of 2026 cutting targets, and the consensus still reflects deep skepticism about near-term execution. After the May results, Barclays trimmed its target to $14 and HSBC lowered to $15.60 in June — both well below the current price of $13.05, though the mean across all analysts sits at a reported $122.50, a figure that looks almost certainly distorted by stale or mismatched data and should be treated with caution. JP Morgan has maintained an Underweight, and Jefferies downgraded to Hold in January. The bear case centres on margin compression, intensifying domestic competition, and a quality profile that the ORTEX factor scores confirm is weak — with low Piotroski F-scores dragging on the overall rating. Bulls counter with an extraordinary EPS momentum picture: Li Auto ranks in the 99th percentile on 90-day EPS momentum and the 97th percentile on EPS surprise, with forward earnings estimates rising sharply even as the stock has de-rated. The EV/EBITDA multiple of 0.14 and a price-to-earnings ratio that has compressed around 24% over the past month point to a stock that has already priced in considerable pessimism.

Historical reactions provide little comfort for either camp. The two most recent earnings prints both delivered immediate drops — roughly 5% on the day and around 7% over the following week after the May 2026 results, and a similar pattern after the March 2026 print. Peers tracked broadly higher this week: NIO gained around 2.4% and XPEV added 4.2%, matching or slightly underperforming Li Auto's 6.4% weekly move, which suggests the recent rally is not purely sector-driven. Institutional flows offer little additional signal — BlackRock added modestly in July while Morgan Stanley trimmed, and insider activity has been limited to a small CTO sale in June.

Wednesday's print will therefore test whether Li Auto's improving earnings momentum has reached the point where it can reverse the pattern of post-results selling that has defined its last two quarters.