NCH2 dropped 3.6% on September 1 against a borrow market that has now been in continuous stress for two months — and the latest data shows conditions tightening further rather than easing.
Availability has fallen to 7% of the shares already lent out, down from 18% at the end of August. That is roughly one share left for every fourteen already borrowed. The direction matters as much as the level: this is a fresh multi-week low for availability, reversing the modest loosening that followed the August extremes. Cost to borrow has come off its most volatile daily prints — it hit 340% twice in late July and again on August 5 — but at 112% it is still deeply elevated, and it rose 20% in the past week. The borrow market is not normalising. It is oscillating at stress levels, with no structural return of supply visible in the daily data. A week ago, the previous note described availability falling to 7% and CTB running at 112%; on both measures, conditions are essentially unchanged. The situation has not broken in either direction.
The ORTEX short score captures the same picture. At 96.8, it has pulled back barely from the 97.3 reached earlier in August. Factor scores reinforce the message: the short score rank sits in the bottom 1% of the ORTEX universe, the utilization rank in the bottom 2%, and days-to-cover in the bottom 1%. EPS momentum over 30 days ranks in the 100th percentile — not because earnings are strong, but because estimates have moved sharply in one direction. The analyst consensus implies roughly 33% upside to the mean target of €10.41, versus the current price of €7.82 — a gap that has existed for some time without closing.
The fundamental picture offers limited comfort. Nucera is unprofitable on a trailing basis, with a deeply negative P/E and a negative EV/EBITDA ratio that reflects negative EBITDA. The price-to-book sits at 1.37, up modestly over the past month, which is the one multiple moving in a constructive direction. Ownership is heavily concentrated: thyssenkrupp's holding vehicle controls 50.2% of shares and Federico De Nora holds a further 25.8%, leaving the free float thin. Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund holds 6%. Active institutional owners account for a small fraction of the remaining shares, and the most recent filing changes among them — Van Eck trimming 1,517 shares, BlackRock cutting 3,025 — are marginal rather than directional.
The August 11-12 earnings release is the most recent data point on price reaction. The stock fell around 1.2% on the day and 2.6% over the five sessions that followed. The prior print in May produced the opposite: a 7.3% one-day gain and a 5.7% five-day move. The next event is not until December 16, so there is no near-term catalyst in the calendar to force a resolution of the positioning tension.
What to watch is whether the brief loosening of availability seen at the end of August — when it recovered to 18% — was a genuine signal of supply returning, or simply noise within a structurally locked borrow market; the renewed tightening to 7% suggests the latter, and any further move toward the 52-week minimum of 0.01% would be the clearest possible confirmation that the squeeze setup is intensifying rather than fading.
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