CD Projekt's Short Score Holds Stubbornly High as the Stock Slips Further

CD Projekt Red is now three trading days past its September 2 earnings release, down nearly 10% on the month, and the short score that spiked before results has refused to meaningfully retreat — the tension between an elevated momentum signal and a completely relaxed lending market remains the defining feature of this name.

The short score tells the most persistent story. It peaked at 72.5 on August 28, barely budged through the earnings date, and has settled at 71.4 this week — a marginal easing of roughly one point over ten days. That is not the kind of collapse you see when a bearish setup was purely about pre-results anxiety. The score remains in the 96th percentile on forward EPS momentum and ranks in just the 4th percentile on short score — meaning the ORTEX signal still reads as elevated relative to the broad universe. Price momentum is the driver: the stock closed at PLN 232.0 on September 4, off 1.9% on the week and 9.8% on the month, with no sign yet that the selling pressure has exhausted itself.

The lending market continues to flatly contradict any squeeze narrative. Borrow availability has actually loosened further since the pre-earnings period — it ran near 330–440% of short interest through late July, and has expanded to 514% now, its widest reading in the data window. That means roughly five shares are available to borrow for every one currently shorted. Cost to borrow, at 0.79%, has ticked marginally higher over the week but remains firmly in the low category and has been range-bound between 0.67% and 0.92% all summer. The borrow market is not pricing in any stress. These are conditions where short sellers face no friction, but they are also not piling in aggressively — the available pool is growing, not shrinking.

The analyst consensus gives a neutral read on where the stock should be. The mean price target across the covering universe is PLN 236.9, barely above Friday's close of PLN 232.0 — a return potential of under 2%. No recent target changes are on the tape. The valuation picture has compressed: the PE multiple has contracted by roughly three points over the past 30 days to 24.4x, and EV/EBITDA has pulled back nearly 2.7 turns over the same period to 13.7x. The forward EPS momentum factor scores are genuinely strong — 75th percentile on 30-day EPS momentum and 96th percentile on 12-month forward EPS growth — suggesting the fundamental case is not broken, even as the share price drifts. Among peers, UBI fell 8.3% on the week and SF dropped 2.6%, so CDR's 1.9% weekly decline looks relatively contained against the softer end of European gaming names. TEN on the Warsaw exchange added 0.9%, the one nearby standout.

On ownership, the founders remain the dominant presence: Marcin Iwinski holds nearly 12.9% and Michal Kicinski around 10%, with both showing no reported change since year-end 2024. The most recent disclosed insider transaction — Iwinski's January 2025 open-market sale of 223,520 shares at PLN 216.24 — is now stale at nearly 20 months old and carries limited current signal. BlackRock added 135,000 shares as of August 31 and Norges Bank built a 2.0 million share position in the most recent reporting period, both suggesting passive and sovereign wealth accumulation at these levels, even as momentum remains negative.

The November 24 earnings date is the next hard catalyst. With the short score elevated but not accelerating, borrow loose, and the analyst consensus sitting almost exactly at market, what to watch is whether price momentum stabilises or continues to erode — because the score's trajectory from here depends far more on where the stock goes than on what happens in the lending market.