Daqo New Energy enters the week of September 15 with bears firmly in control — short interest rising, the borrow market tightening sharply, and a stock that has shed nearly 10% in five sessions alone.
The dominant signal right now is the acceleration in short positioning. Short interest has climbed 10.5% over the past week to 7.5% of the free float, or roughly 5.04 million shares. That build has coincided with a meaningful tightening in borrow availability, which has dropped from around 354% at the start of the prior week to 290% — still within the normal range, but the direction of travel is clear and consistent. Borrowing costs remain low at 0.54%, unchanged in character over the past month, so this is a story about more shorts entering the market rather than existing shorts scrambling to hold on. The ORTEX short score has climbed to 71.3, its highest reading in the data series shown here, up from 67.5 just one week ago. That trajectory — a persistent grind higher across two weeks — is more meaningful than any single-day spike.
Options positioning tells a somewhat different story. The put/call ratio has fallen to 1.28, well below its 20-day average of 1.59 and sitting roughly 0.8 standard deviations below the mean. A month ago the PCR was running above 2.3; the collapse in put demand relative to calls suggests options traders have become less defensively positioned even as shorts have added. Whether that reflects sellers of protection or genuine call buying is unclear, but the divergence from the short interest trend is worth flagging. The 52-week PCR range runs from 0.35 to 3.42, so the current reading is far from extreme in either direction.
The Street is difficult to characterise clearly from available data. Only two current ratings are on record — one hold, one sell — and the analyst data carries a staleness caveat. The most recent actionable move came from JP Morgan in late July, which maintained an Overweight rating but slashed its target from $35.50 to $22.00, a 38% cut. At $11.26, the stock already trades at half that revised target, implying the Street's remaining bulls are carrying numbers that look increasingly stretched. The bear case centres on polysilicon prices retreating to around CNY 48.5/kg amid severe oversupply, and installation declines running more than 55% year-on-year in China. The bull case hangs on $2.2 billion in liquidity and management projections for 15–21% revenue growth through 2027. Neither the EV/EBITDA multiple of 2.0x nor the price-to-book of 0.18x provides a natural floor when the underlying commodity is in freefall. The EPS surprise factor score ranks in the 85th percentile — one area where execution has held up — but the analyst recommendation differential ranks just 3rd percentile, reflecting near-universal caution.
The ownership picture adds context. Insider stakes are large and concentrated: founder Guangfu Xu holds 18.4% and Xiang Xu 11.4%, both with no reported change through Q1. Morgan Stanley added 1.66 million shares in Q2, a notable institutional move into weakness. State Street added 411,000 shares through August. These buys suggest some professional money has been willing to step in at lower prices, though the overall holder count of 97 institutions is thin. A 13G/A filed in November 2025 by Michael Gorzynski disclosed a 9.99% stake — but that filing is now more than 300 days old and the position may have changed materially since disclosure.
Earnings land on October 27. The two most recent results both produced negative reactions: the August print saw a 3.3% next-day fall and a further 2.9% drop over the following week; the prior event fell 4.0% on the day and 9.4% over five days. Closest listed peer JKS fell 13.8% on the week and CSIQ lost 11.8%, confirming this is a sector-wide move rather than a DQ-specific event. The question into October 27 is whether management's polysilicon price assumptions for H2 hold, or whether the commodity data between now and then forces another downward revision to guidance.
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