LOT heads into its August 28 earnings print on a sharp momentum swing — up 44% over the past month — even as the broader short-seller community is pulling back.
The borrow picture reflects that retreat. Short interest has fallen nearly 20% over the past week to around 550,000 shares, and the ORTEX short score has eased from 65 to around 59 in the same period — still elevated, but directionally softer. Cost to borrow remains high at 19%, a level that makes maintaining short positions expensive. Borrow availability has loosened meaningfully, hitting 722% — well above the tighter readings of 364–471% seen just last week — which means new shorts face no structural constraint in entering the trade. The move in availability is notable: it jumped roughly 43% in a week, suggesting some existing shorts covered into the rally rather than fresh longs driving the price action alone.
The bull-bear debate for Lotus is structurally unresolved. Bulls point to a luxury EV brand with genuine technological differentiation, and the analyst consensus — though dated, with the most recent ORTEX read from March 2026 — carries a mean price target of $2.40 against a current price of $1.25, implying substantial upside if execution improves. Deutsche Bank's initiation at Hold with a $7.00 target dates back to April 2024 and should not be treated as current guidance given the stock's trajectory since then. Bears have the harder numbers on their side: a Piotroski F-score of 3, return on assets at -12%, and year-on-year sales down 44% as of recent readings. The EPS surprise factor score ranks only in the 45th percentile, offering little evidence of a consistent beat cycle.
Ownership is concentrated and illiquid in structure. The top three holders — Lotus Advanced Technology Limited Partnership, AlBukhary Corporation, and Zhejiang Geely Holding — together control nearly 78% of shares. Geely and AlBukhary both added shares materially in the most recent filing period, which limits the practical float available for trading. With under 650,000 shares short against that backdrop, the absolute short position is small. The two most recent earnings events produced modest negative reactions — down roughly 1.5% on the day and 3% over five days in May, and a similar pattern in April — suggesting the market has not historically made large directional bets around these prints.
The August 28 report is therefore less a test of whether LOT can sustain its recent momentum and more a test of whether any improvement in delivery volumes or path-to-profitability language can justify a stock that has nearly doubled off its lows while the underlying fundamentals remain deeply challenged.
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