GRND heads into the September stretch with a curious split: the stock has shed 15% over the past month and slipped another 2.2% this week, yet short sellers are quietly covering and options traders are among the most bullish they have been all year.
The most striking development is how aggressively shorts have retreated. Short interest has fallen by nearly a third over the past month, dropping from roughly 10.3 million shares in late July to 7.2 million now — bringing it to 3.9% of the free float, a level that no longer qualifies as a primary pressure point. The unwind was sharpest in early August, when positions dropped from above 10 million to below 8 million in less than two weeks. Borrow conditions reinforce the picture: the cost to borrow has eased roughly 8% on the week to 0.68%, and availability has loosened materially. With nearly three shares available for every two already borrowed, availability has roughly quadrupled from the tightest readings seen in late July (when it sat near 61%). The lending market has become substantially less congested even as the stock price has continued to fall — a divergence worth noting.
Options positioning tells a similarly constructive story on sentiment. The put/call ratio hit 0.089 on September 4, near the 52-week low of 0.087 and more than a standard deviation below its 20-day average of 0.13. That is one of the least hedged setups GRND has seen in over a year; by contrast, the PCR was running above 0.19 in late July and early August. The shift is abrupt enough to stand out. Where the PCR once reflected meaningful demand for downside protection, it now suggests options participants are not reaching for puts — unusual when a stock has just lost 15% in a month.
The Street remains constructive, but the data trail is mixed. Morgan Stanley's Nathan Feather upgraded GRND to Overweight on July 1 with an $18 target — the most recent bellwether action and a meaningful shift from his February Equal-Weight initiation at $14. Goldman Sachs holds a Buy with a $17 target (trimmed in March from $20), and TD Cowen is at $22 Buy. With the stock closing at $15.25, the consensus mean target of $20.80 implies roughly 36% upside — but that target pool reflects actions spread across several months and some numbers are becoming dated. The forward P/E of 21.6x has compressed by about three turns over the past 30 days, and EV/EBITDA has drifted lower to 11.6x, suggesting valuation is slowly adjusting to the weaker price. Factor scores are mixed: EPS momentum ranks well into the 60s percentile, but the forward earnings growth score (21st percentile) and short score rank (8th percentile) point to modest expectations from both earnings trajectory and short-side conviction.
The ownership picture carries a structural note worth flagging. George Raymond Zage holds approximately 54.9% of shares outstanding and has an active Schedule 13D on the register — the stock's controlling shareholder is a declared activist filer, a fact that shapes how any governance or strategic development would land. Three other Schedule 13D holders — Jeremy Brest at 6.3%, J. Gearon at 6.7%, and James Lu at 7.9% — collectively account for a further concentrated block. Longview Capital trimmed by 3.4 million shares in Q2, representing a notable exit by the largest institutional manager outside the 13D bloc. On the insider side, recent selling has been almost entirely pre-arranged: the CPO's $1.4m sale and the CLO's recurring monthly sales are all 13D-1 plan trades, carrying less directional signal than discretionary selling would. (Schedule 13D/G stakes are as-last-disclosed; holders dropping below 5% can exit without a further filing.)
The next earnings event is pencilled in for November 6. The most recent print — August 6 — produced a 6.7% one-day drop and an 11.4% five-day loss, a pattern that frames how the market has been reading results. With short sellers continuing to reduce exposure and options traders clearly not bracing for another leg down, the question heading into that November date is whether the short unwind has already priced in a recovery, or whether the fundamental growth concerns that drove the original short build — slowing user momentum, macro sensitivity, advertiser spending risk — have genuinely resolved.
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