Li Auto: Earnings Day Print Fails to Break the Deadlock

Li Auto reports again today — and the two-sided tension that defined Wednesday's print has not cleared.

The short book remains at record size and the borrow market stays near fully exhausted. Short interest held at 29.1 million shares after its 14% single-session jump on August 25, the highest level in the daily history. Availability is just 5.9% — fewer than six shares lendable for every hundred already out on loan. That tightness has been a near-constant feature for weeks; the market hit a low of 3.8% on August 14 and has never recovered meaningfully. The ORTEX short score reached 66.6 on August 25, up from 62.8 two weeks prior and the highest reading on record. Options traders are pulling hard in the other direction: the put/call ratio is running at 0.63, more than two standard deviations below its 20-day average of 0.81, a level of call-side enthusiasm that stands in direct contrast to everything the lending market is saying. The stock itself is down 1.1% on Wednesday and 4.5% on the week, trading at $12.14.

The analyst picture offers little comfort to either camp. The most recent Street action — HSBC lowering its target to $15.60 in June, Barclays cutting to $14 after the prior quarter's print, JP Morgan holding an Underweight with a $15.50 target — tells a story of persistent caution at low absolute price targets that cluster just above current levels. The mean analyst target is in the mid-teens, implying modest upside from here but no conviction on a meaningful re-rating. EPS momentum factor scores are striking in isolation — ranked in the 98th percentile on 30-day momentum and 97th on earnings surprise — but those reads sit uncomfortably alongside a short score ranked in the bottom decile of the universe and utilization rank at the 3rd percentile, meaning almost no stock in the database has a tighter borrow market. Bulls point to consistently beating estimates and improving forward earnings revisions; bears counter that delivery volumes missed last quarter and margin pressure in a fiercely competitive Chinese EV market is structural, not cyclical.

The Q2 print from May ended with the stock falling 4.9% the next day and 7.7% over the following five sessions — a pattern call buyers are explicitly fading today. NIO gained 2.1% on Wednesday and XPEV added 4%, suggesting the broader Chinese EV complex caught a bid even as Li Auto lagged.

Today's earnings report is ultimately a test of whether the company's execution — on deliveries, margins, and new model momentum — is strong enough to force the record short book to cover against a borrow market with almost nowhere left to go.