Lucid Group ends the week with shorts pressing harder and the lending pool still almost completely dry, even as the stock bounced 4.4% on Tuesday to close at $4.07.
Short interest has continued to build. It now stands at 28.3% of free float, up 15.5% over the week and 73% over the past month. The jump from roughly 55 million shares short at the start of September to just over 91 million is one of the more aggressive short-building episodes in the stock's recent history. Days to cover, per the latest FINRA fortnightly data, runs at 8.1 days, meaning unwinding the position in an orderly way would take bears well over a week of average trading volume.
The lending market remains about as tight as it can get. Availability has spent the entire past three weeks below 1%, oscillating between near-zero and a brief 4.3% reading on September 9 before snapping back down. At 0.53% on Tuesday, roughly one share is available for every 190 already borrowed, and that pocket of supply was effectively zero as recently as Monday at 0.08%. Cost to borrow has stabilised in the 7% to 7.3% range, well below the 21% level seen in mid-August, which tells you most of the short book was established before the pool fully tightened. The ORTEX short score has ticked up to 78.2, its highest reading in this data window, and the utilisation rank sits at the 1st percentile relative to peers, the tightest position in the coverage universe. The options market is slightly less alarmed: the put/call ratio at 1.83 is marginally below its 20-day average of 1.86 and close to flat on the z-score, meaning options traders are not adding to downside hedges at the margin, even as short sellers are.
The Street remains broadly sceptical about near-term prospects. Citi kept its Buy rating in August but trimmed its target to $11 from $14, and the direction of travel across the analyst panel has been uniformly downward since March. RBC sits at Sector Perform with a $7 target. TD Cowen and Baird both hold Neutral or equivalent ratings with targets in the $7 to $12 range. The mean price target across the panel is $7.94, nearly double the current price, but the gap reflects suspended 2026 guidance rather than a genuine re-rating catalyst. The bear case centres on negative free cash flow, dilution risk, and an ongoing dependency on external capital. Bulls point to vertical integration, a strong product roadmap, and the argument that cost discipline is intact beneath the operational noise. Factor scores add little comfort: the short score ranks at the 3rd percentile, the utilisation rank at the 1st, and the dividend score at the 20th.
The ownership register carries one genuinely structural fact: Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund holds a Schedule 13D position at 56.85% of the class, down from 60.77% at the prior filing in April. That filing carries activist-intent status, making the PIF the dominant force in any capital structure decision. Uber Technologies, which disclosed an 11.52% passive stake via Schedule 13G in April, shows up in the institutional data holding 9.58% as of June 30 after adding roughly 24 million shares. Both the PIF trimming and Uber building are worth watching, though as last-disclosed positions they may not reflect current levels. On the insider side, the only open-market activity in the past 90 days was a director selling 1,000 shares under a 10b5-1 plan in September, a planned disposal rather than a discretionary signal.
The alt data picture is colourful but not directionally decisive. California ZEV sales data from the California Energy Commission showed the largest Q2 for Lucid on record since 2022 at 1,133 vehicles. Colorado battery-electric registrations tracked by Atlas EV Hub have risen for 18 consecutive months. Germany produced Lucid's largest August registration count on record since 2023 at 26 units. These are real-economy signals, but none of the registration datasets has yet been measured to lead Lucid's reported revenue figures, so they are context rather than forward guidance.
Earnings are due November 6. The last two prints produced one-day moves of minus 10% and minus 13% respectively, with the five-day drift matching or extending those losses both times. With short interest near a multi-month high, the borrow pool essentially closed to new entrants, and guidance still suspended, the November print becomes the next moment where the standoff between a heavily committed short book and a stock with virtually no available borrow gets tested.
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