Jones Trading downgraded PS to Hold this morning, pulling its Buy rating just as the stock trades 40% above where it stood a month ago. The timing is striking: the downgrade landed the same week the borrow market hit its most extreme conditions on record.
Jason Weaver at Jones Trading initiated coverage with a Buy in July, raised the target to $42 in August, and now steps aside entirely — with no new price target. The stock is at $59.17. That's well above the consensus mean target of $42.78, which itself has barely moved while the stock ran hard. Wells Fargo holds an Equal-Weight at $36. Tigress Financial is Neutral at $41. The gap between where analysts think PS should trade and where it does is now substantial.
Citigroup made the same call a month earlier, downgrading from Buy to Neutral in August. The analyst community is converging on caution — just later than the stock's move.
While analysts debate valuation, the lending market has been sending a louder signal. Cost to borrow surged from roughly 35% annualised on September 17 to a peak of 278% on September 25 — nearly an eightfold move in a single week.
Availability collapsed with it. On September 25, availability dropped to 0.02% — effectively zero. Every share in the lending pool was out on loan. That is the tightest reading in the past 52 weeks.
As of September 28, availability has recovered slightly to 13.4%. That remains critically tight. For context, anything below 50% is very tight; normal conditions sit above 200%.
Short interest rose 83% over the past week to 830,406 shares. The one-month increase is 58%. The ORTEX short score stands at 66.3 — elevated, and up from 61.3 two weeks ago.
The put/call ratio hit 1.59 on September 28, above the 20-day average of 1.34. It is not at a 52-week extreme — the high is 2.42 — but the direction since mid-September is notable. Puts are being bought at an increasing rate as the stock has rallied.
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