CD Projekt heads into earnings with short score jumping and borrow loose

CD Projekt Red enters its September 2 results in an unusual position: the ORTEX short score has jumped sharply over the past week, yet the lending market tells a completely different story — borrow remains loose, costs are negligible, and short interest is far from extreme.

The most striking move this week is in the short score, which climbed to 72.5 from 43.7 in a single session on August 18. That is not a gradual drift — it is a step change, and it has held above 71 every day since. What makes it notable is that the score is elevated not because of aggressive short positioning in the lending market, but likely because of price momentum deteriorating. The stock has fallen 8.4% over the past week to PLN 234, giving back almost all of the past month's ground, with most of that drop landing in the last two sessions. With earnings five days away, the score's jump looks like a momentum-driven signal rather than a crowding signal.

The lending market flatly contradicts any squeeze narrative. Borrow availability runs at roughly 440% of short interest — meaning there are more than four shares available to borrow for every one currently shorted. That is firmly in the comfortable zone. The 52-week low in availability was 215%, so even at the tightest point of the past year the market was nowhere near stressed. Cost to borrow is similarly untroubling at under 0.8%, a level that has barely moved in thirty days. Short interest itself ranks in just the 4th percentile on the ORTEX short score rank — an unusually low reading that confirms shorts have not built a meaningful structural position here. The short score elevation is therefore a momentum warning, not a crowding event.

The Street is similarly unenthusiastic but not alarmed. The analyst mean price target of PLN 239 sits only marginally above the current price, leaving almost no return potential priced into consensus. Recent analyst changes are absent from the snapshot, suggesting coverage has been quiet ahead of the print. On valuation, the price-to-earnings multiple has compressed by roughly 3 points over the past month to 24.4x, and EV/EBITDA has fallen nearly 2.7 points over the same period to 13.7x — both moving in the same direction as the stock and pointing to a de-rating rather than a re-rating. The one genuinely bullish factor score is the forward earnings growth rank, which sits in the 95th percentile on twelve-month EPS growth expectations. That extraordinary figure reflects how depressed the earnings base was, and the gap between that growth rank and the weak EV/EBIT score (10th percentile) captures the core debate: the recovery in earnings estimates is real, but capital efficiency remains poor.

Ownership is heavily concentrated among founders and Polish pension funds, which historically damps borrow availability at extremes. Co-founder Marcin Iwinski holds nearly 13% of shares, Michal Kicinski holds 10%, and together the founding group controls well over a third of the register. The most recent insider trade on record — a sale by Iwinski of roughly 223,000 shares in January 2025 at PLN 216 — is stale enough that it offers limited read-through to current sentiment. BlackRock added 54,702 shares in the most recent reporting period through July, a modest increment that suggests passive rebalancing rather than a conviction move.

Earnings history adds a cautionary note. The last two reported prints both produced small negative one-day moves, and a modest five-day drift lower followed. The prior result in March 2026 was also negative on day one before recovering over the week. None of these reactions were large, but the consistent direction suggests the market has tended to sell the news into CD Projekt results rather than buy them.

The September 2 print is the next inflection point: the question is whether forward earnings estimates — which have driven the stock's strongest factor score — hold up against whatever the company says about the pace of Witcher 4 development, and whether the recent price slide pulls the short score back down or continues to push it higher.