D-Wave Quantum enters the final week of August with a curious split: short sellers added positions at the fastest weekly pace in months, yet the borrow market has simultaneously become the most accessible it has been in weeks — a combination that makes the short setup more crowded in share count but cheaper and easier to maintain.
Short interest is the dominant story here, and it is running hot. At 19.1% of free float — roughly 66.4 million shares — QBTS ranks in the 6th percentile of the ORTEX universe on the short score rank, meaning nearly the entire market carries less short pressure. That figure rose 3% on the week and 4.6% over the past month, a steady accumulation rather than a sudden spike. The ORTEX short score has also been climbing, reaching 69.4 on August 25, its highest point in the observable window, up from 68.5 just ten days earlier. Bears have been adding consistently, not covering.
The borrow picture is where the week's real tension sits. Availability loosened sharply — from around 17% last week to 26.8% today, a 58% improvement in one week. That is still well within tight territory relative to the 52-week range, which bottomed at just 0.9%, but the direction matters: new shorts coming in this week faced meaningfully better conditions than those entering in late July, when availability was in single digits and the lending pool was nearly exhausted. Cost to borrow remains low at 0.85%, barely changed across the month, so there is no financial penalty for holding a short position right now. Options traders, meanwhile, are slightly more bullish than usual: the put/call ratio of 0.74 sits fractionally below its 20-day average of 0.75, a modest signal that call activity is not being overwhelmed by hedging demand.
The Street picture is complicated by QBTS's financial profile. The company carries negative earnings yield and a deeply negative EV/EBITDA, both consistent with a pre-profit growth story. The price-to-book multiple has expanded to 8.5x, up 1.8 points over the past 30 days, driven by the stock's 19% monthly gain to $19.35. That re-rating reflects momentum more than fundamentals — the ORTEX factor score on forward EPS growth ranks in only the 29th percentile, while quality metrics remain weak. The EPS surprise score of 81 is a genuine bright spot, suggesting D-Wave has been beating low-set expectations consistently, but that is a different thing from growing profitability. The most recent earnings print, on August 6, saw the stock slip roughly 3% on the day and a further 2.3% over the following week — a reminder that beats have not been enough to sustain rallies.
Insider activity adds a layer of caution. Every transaction recorded in the past 90 days has been a sale. CEO Alan Baratz sold $976,000 worth of stock on July 14. CFO John Markovich sold twice, in mid-June and again in mid-July. The EVP and Chief Legal Officer both sold on August 17 at prices above $21, above where the stock trades today. Net insider selling over the 90-day window totals roughly $39 million in value across 1.5 million shares. None of the individual trades carries a high significance score, suggesting these are likely scheduled disposals rather than discretionary calls, but the uniformity — no purchases at any level, from any executive — is notable in the context of a stock that has rallied nearly 20% in a month.
The institutional base has been building: BlackRock added nearly 3 million shares in the most recent filing period, Norges Bank added 4.3 million, and Defiance ETFs effectively built a new position of 2.6 million shares. That institutional accumulation provides some demand foundation, but it also means a larger passive and index-linked base that will not react to price signals. With the next earnings event not until November 5, the weeks ahead will be shaped by sector sentiment, insider activity trends, and whether the current loosening in borrow availability continues or reverses back toward the single-digit tightness seen in late July.
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