JSW — Jastrzębska Spółka Węglowa — has delivered the week bears feared: the Polish coking coal miner closed Tuesday at PLN 31.5, up 12% on the week and 24% over the past month, as the short squeeze that ORTEX data flagged weeks ago accelerates into post-earnings territory.
The decompression in the lending market is the defining story — and it has moved materially since the last note. Availability has climbed to 23.6% from a trough of 4.4% on August 10, a fivefold expansion over two weeks, though the direction of travel is the most telling detail: every session from August 10 through August 17 saw availability below 13%, and the pool has broadened consistently since then. That trajectory means shorts are returning borrowed shares. Cost to borrow, however, has not fully capitulated — it remains at 9.9%, still tripling what it was in late July when the squeeze pressure began building. The ORTEX short score holds at 87.0, barely off its recent peak and effectively unchanged from the 87.2 flagged in the August 24 earnings preview. What has changed is the scale of the stock move; what has not changed is the depth of residual short positioning.
The broader squeeze dynamic is worth separating from the tactical borrow picture. Bears have been caught offsides — the stock is up 24% in a month against a ORTEX universe percentile short score of 87, placing JSW deep in the tail of the most-shorted names globally. The EPS momentum factor scores underline why longs have had the better of this: JSW ranks in the 93rd percentile on 30-day EPS momentum and the 98th on 90-day EPS momentum, the strongest fundamental signal in the scorecard. EV/EBITDA sits at 2.5x, barely changed over the month, while PE has compressed to 6.3x — both figures pointing to a stock the market is still pricing at distressed multiples despite the rally. The analyst consensus offers limited fresh guidance; the most recent published target of PLN 22.99 is now well below the current price, and those estimates are over 16 days old and marked stale. The gap between where analysts left their targets and where the stock is trading is itself information — the move has outrun the Street's last-published view.
Ownership gives this an additional structural layer. The State Treasury of the Republic of Poland controls 55% of shares outstanding, leaving a relatively thin free float for international investors and making the mechanics of a squeeze more acute. With that ownership immovable, the effective borrowable pool was always constrained — which explains why the 52-week floor for availability reached 2.9% in mid-July and why even the current 23.6% reading still sits well below what most markets would consider normal. BlackRock and Dimensional added modestly to their positions last quarter; flows from that cohort have been directionally positive but small relative to the scale of the State Treasury's dominance.
The historical reaction pattern from earnings adds useful context. The May print produced a modest one-day decline of 2.4% followed by an 8.3% five-day gain — a pattern where the immediate reaction underwhelmed and the subsequent drift rewarded holders. Thursday's August 27 results have already landed, and the stock's 4.3% daily gain on August 25 preceded the release; what now matters is whether the five-day drift following this print mirrors May or reverses as short-cover flows ease and availability stabilises above 20%.
The next data points to track are the pace at which availability continues to rise — if it breaks through 30% and cost to borrow retreats toward 5%, that would signal meaningful short capitulation rather than tactical covering — and whether the ORTEX short score finally begins to decline from the 87 handle that has anchored it for the past two weeks.
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