CAR Group heads into the final days of August with short sellers adding positions into a falling stock — a combination worth tracking closely in an ASX digital classifieds name that rarely sits at the centre of the short-selling conversation.
Short interest has climbed to 12.2% of free float, the highest level of the past six weeks. That is a material reading. Roughly 46.2 million shares are currently sold short, up about 5% from a month ago and edging higher through each of the past two weeks. The ORTEX short score has settled just above 82 — a reading that places CAR in the most-shorted decile of its coverage universe, with both the short score rank and days-to-cover rank sitting at the bottom of the factor percentile table. The borrow market, however, has loosened substantially. Cost to borrow crashed more than 70% in a single week to just over 1%, having spiked above 4.8% on August 21. Availability has moved with it: after tightening sharply to 87% on August 26 — its tightest reading of the past year — it eased back to 99% by August 27, suggesting the brief borrow crunch that drove CTB higher has cleared. That combination — elevated short interest but falling borrow costs and improving availability — points to established short positions rather than fresh aggressive building. The squeeze risk that was building last week has dissipated.
Where the bears find most support is in the fundamentals positioning. CAR's EV/EBITDA has drifted down to 14.5x, off about 0.5 turns in a week and roughly in line over the past month, while the PE sits at 22.4x. Both multiples are compressing alongside the stock, which is down 4.1% on the week to AUD 27.57 and gave back a further 2.3% in Friday's session alone. The analyst consensus mean target of AUD 33.32 implies meaningful upside from current levels — though that figure is 17 days old and sits just past the 14-day freshness threshold, so it should be treated with some caution. The EPS momentum factor score for the 90-day window ranks in the 83rd percentile, a genuine bright spot, but near-term EPS surprise sits at only the 32nd percentile and the analyst recommendation differential score languishes at the 4th percentile, suggesting the Street is not enthusiastically adding exposure here.
The sharpest contrast is in peer performance. SEEK, the most closely correlated ASX peer at 70%, gained 3.1% on the week. REA Group was essentially flat, up 0.1%. CAR's 4.1% weekly decline against those two reads as stock-specific weakness rather than sector-wide pressure — and short sellers appear to have read it the same way, with the modest weekly SI gain suggesting incremental conviction rather than a new wave of positioning.
Institutional ownership gives some structural context. State Street holds 11.4%, Australian Super added an extraordinary 34.3 million shares to reach a 9.4% stake as of June 30, and First Sentier added around 420,000 shares through to August 21. That is a well-anchored register. Recent insider activity is thin — the CEO received equity awards on August 24 at no cash cost, which is routine compensation rather than a directional signal, and the only open-market buy on record in the past year was a modest AUD 14,000 purchase by a non-executive director in November 2025. Net insider buying over the past 90 days is zero.
The stock just posted earnings on August 9–10, and the reaction was strongly positive: the one-day move following the result was roughly plus 10%, with a five-day gain of about 9.5%. That means CAR now trades more than 13% below its post-earnings peak of just two weeks ago — a reversal that has evidently attracted fresh short interest. With no next earnings date yet announced and borrow conditions now stabilised, what to watch is whether the daily SI grind higher continues as the stock tests the low-AUD 27s, and whether availability re-tightens if the stock fails to find a floor at current levels.
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