Ecopetrol Heads Into Q3 Print With Bears Retreating

Ecopetrol reports its next results on September 15 with short sellers meaningfully pulling back even as options traders adopt a more cautious posture than usual.

The clearest shift in positioning is in short interest. Bears have covered aggressively — shares short have fallen roughly 32% over the past month, dropping from nearly 9.8 million to around 6.6 million. The retreat has been steady and deliberate, not a single-session unwind. Borrow conditions reflect that easing: cost to borrow has more than halved over the past week to around 1.7%, and availability has loosened to roughly 82% — well above the 30% reading seen in early September, when the lending pool was considerably tighter. That combination points to a market where bearish conviction has faded rather than intensified ahead of the print.

Options positioning tells a different story, and the contrast is worth noting. The put/call ratio has climbed to 0.63, well above its 20-day average near 0.47 — the highest it has been in the past year is 0.90, so the current reading isn't extreme, but the direction is clear. Through most of August the PCR ran below 0.25, and the jump since late August signals that options traders have started adding downside protection even as short sellers step away. The stock's 1.8% dip on Thursday, following a 2.9% gain on the week, may be contributing to that hedging demand.

The analyst community remains broadly cautious but has been nudging targets higher. UBS lifted its target to $16 in August, and Citi downgraded to Neutral while raising its target to $18 in June. JPMorgan kept its Neutral stance and moved its target to $13 earlier in the year. The consensus price target sits near $13.90 — below the current price of $17.75 — which is an unusual setup that suggests the Street still sees the ADR as running ahead of fundamentals. The stock trades at roughly 9.8x earnings and 1.5x book, metrics that look modest in isolation but carry the weight of Colombia-specific political risk and the company's sensitivity to oil prices, which have recently been testing $75 per barrel. Ecopetrol's dividend score ranks in the 78th percentile of its universe, giving income-focused investors a reason to hold even when the macro backdrop is uncertain.

On past earnings reactions, recent prints have tended to dip on the day — three of the last four saw small negative 1-day moves — before recovering over the following week with 5-day gains averaging around 2–3%. The ownership structure is worth noting: Colombia's government holds roughly 88.5% of shares, leaving the float thin and institutional exposure concentrated among passive and quant names, with Marshall Wace building a notable position over recent months.

The September 15 print is therefore less a test of whether Ecopetrol can grow and more a question of whether its operational performance justifies the gap between the current share price and a Street consensus that sits meaningfully below it.