A0126Z0 enters the final weeks of September with a striking reversal in its lending market — borrowing costs have cratered just as the stock itself continues to drift lower, creating an unusual split between a loosening borrow environment and persistent price weakness.
The most dramatic development of the past fortnight is the collapse in cost to borrow. CTB peaked above 41% on September 1, when the lending pool was fully exhausted — availability had fallen to zero, the tightest reading in the past 52 weeks. Since then, the borrow market has swung decisively the other way. CTB closed at 3.3% on September 17, down roughly 67% on the week and 57% versus a month ago. Availability has opened back up to around 439% — meaning there are now more than four shares available to lend for every one currently borrowed, compared to a pool that was entirely depleted three weeks ago. That is one of the more abrupt lending-market reversals visible in the data this year.
The stock's performance tells a different story. Samsung Epis has declined 15% over the past month, with a further 3.8% slip this week alone to close at KRW 327,000. The borrow squeeze in late August and early September coincided with the sharpest part of that sell-off — CTB was running above 28% when the stock was under the most pressure. The easing of borrow costs since then has not arrested the price decline; the shares have continued to drift even as the short-selling pressure — at least as measured by the cost and availability of borrows — has materially reduced. Short interest itself remains modest at roughly 1% of free float, and the ORTEX short score has pulled back from 43.7 on September 7 to 38.6 as of September 17, consistent with a lending market that is becoming less stressed rather than more so.
The ownership picture helps explain why the float dynamics can swing so sharply. Samsung C&T Corporation controls 43% of shares, and Samsung Electronics holds a further 31%. Combined, those two anchor positions leave a very thin tradeable float — any meaningful demand for borrows can exhaust the available pool almost immediately, driving CTB to extreme levels, before normalising just as quickly once that demand dissipates. The National Pension Service holds an additional 5.7%. International managers — Vanguard, BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, Dimensional — account for a combined low-single-digit percentage, with most of them marginally adding to positions in recent months.
Insiders have been steady buyers through the weakness. CEO Kim Kyung-Ah purchased 1,000 shares at KRW 380,000 in late July, and Executive Director Kim Hyung Jun picked up 274 shares at KRW 360,000 in early August. Both prices are above the current KRW 327,000 close, meaning these purchases are currently underwater. The same pair were also buying in early February, at prices around KRW 591,000–595,000, making the accumulated insider book considerably offside relative to today's level. The 90-day net insider buying totals approximately KRW 478.6 billion in value, though those figures include aggregate filings from the large Samsung group shareholders.
The ORTEX stock score has been softening. A recent note flagged a reading of 38-39, down from 41 a month ago and trailing the median for KOSE-listed holding companies. Earnings history offers limited comfort: the two most recent quarterly prints produced first-day moves of +6.4% and +3.2% respectively, while two prior results saw the stock fall 3.6% and hold near flat on the day before declining further over the following five sessions. The next earnings event is flagged for October 23, and with the borrow market now loose and the short score drifting lower, the setup into that release will depend more on what the fundamental numbers say than on any short-side positioning pressure.
The key dynamic to watch is whether the current easing in borrow availability and CTB proves durable — or whether renewed demand for borrows re-tightens the lending pool as the October earnings date approaches, repeating the pattern seen heading into early September.
See the live data behind this article on ORTEX.
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