QVCG has fallen another 11% this week to $14.14, pushing GoldenTree Asset Management further into the red on a position it has been actively adding to — and the gap between activist conviction and market reality is widening.
GoldenTree's buying has not stopped. The firm added another 80,000 shares on September 24 at $14.35, a discretionary open-market purchase with no 10b5-1 plan attached. That follows $26 million of stock bought on September 8 at $16.25 and a further $11.8 million on September 3 at $16.45. Net insider buying over the past 90 days totals roughly $12.3 million across 814,000 shares. GoldenTree's Schedule 13D/A — filed as recently as September 10, three filings since August 14 — discloses a 22% stake, up from 18.8%. At today's $14.14 close, every tranche bought since August is underwater. The activist is not blinking. (As a standard caveat: 13D/G stakes are event-driven disclosures around the 5% threshold; positions are as-last-disclosed and can change without a further filing.)
The counterpoint to GoldenTree's conviction is Silver Point Capital's exit. Silver Point sold $26 million of stock on September 8 in a direct mirror trade — the same price, the same date, GoldenTree buying what Silver Point was selling. Silver Point's 13G now shows a 3.36% stake, down from 10.21%. That is a clean handoff from one sophisticated credit investor to another, and the two now sit on opposite sides of the trade. Silver Point's disclosed stake has dropped below the 5% threshold, so further reductions may go unfiled.
The borrow market tells a straightforward story: this is not a crowded short. Availability is exceptionally loose at 1,560% — meaning there are roughly fifteen shares available to lend for every one currently borrowed. The 52-week tightest reading was 818%, itself still very loose. Cost to borrow has climbed 67% over the week to 6.2%, its highest level in a month, but that follows a period when CTB had retreated sharply from the 13% range seen in late August. Short interest rose 39% over the week in share terms but remains tiny in absolute terms — fewer than 260,000 shares short on a stock with millions of shares available. The lending market is not amplifying the sell-off; this is price pressure without a short squeeze dynamic.
The broader picture for QVC Group remains structurally challenged. The stock is down roughly 15% over the past month and, per recent ORTEX notes, approximately 47% year-to-date. The ORTEX stock score sits near 47, with Value scoring just 5.9 — the weakest pillar — and momentum readings across 91-day and 182-day windows deeply negative. The company has no announced upcoming earnings date, no current dividend (the last was declared in November 2021), and analyst data in the snapshot is absent. The institutional register is concentrated: GoldenTree at 22%, Strategic Value Special Situations at 19.8%, Brookfield Corporation at 14.4%, and Silver Point at 12.6% — together accounting for roughly 70% of shares. With a float this concentrated and a free float this small, daily price moves are likely being driven by a narrow set of participants rather than broad market sentiment.
The setup heading into October is therefore straightforward to frame: the question is whether GoldenTree's accumulation — now spanning more than six weeks and multiple price levels — eventually sets a floor, or whether the stock continues to trade through each new buy. GoldenTree's next 13D amendment, if and when it comes, will be the most watched datapoint on this name.
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