Modivo reports this morning with an almost fully depleted lending pool, a short position covering more than a fifth of the float, and a track record of sharp post-earnings moves in both directions.
The borrow market is the defining feature of this setup, and it has barely shifted since yesterday's preview note. Availability has tightened further to 1.4%, down from 4.9% a week ago, a 73% collapse in available supply over seven days. For most of September the lending pool ran completely dry, with availability hitting zero on multiple sessions through the 3rd to the 11th. The brief loosening last week has already reversed. Cost to borrow is running at 16.3%, up roughly 18% over the past month from around 13.8%, a level that makes new short positions genuinely expensive to initiate and maintain. Anyone trying to add to the short here is paying a meaningful carry penalty on top of the directional risk.
That short position is substantial. Short interest at 20.9% of free float is an entrenched bearish call, not a peripheral hedge, and the ORTEX short score of 91.4 places Modivo among the most heavily shorted names in the universe. The utilization rank sits in the 1st percentile of all stocks tracked, meaning almost no stock has a tighter borrow market. What's notable is the combination: a large, sticky short position, near-zero availability to add, and a cost to borrow that has been climbing for six weeks. That is the profile of a borrow squeeze building in the background, though whether it triggers depends entirely on how the print lands.
The earnings history argues for caution on directional assumptions. August's result sent the stock down 7.4% on the day and a further 6.6% over five sessions. The June print did the opposite, producing an 11% single-day rally and a 24.5% gain over the following week. Both of those moves are large relative to the current price of PLN 88.30. The stock is already down 8.4% on the week coming into today, which means some repositioning ahead of the number may already be embedded in the price.
Institutional ownership adds one more layer. ULTRO, the largest holder at 30.7%, trimmed its stake by 6.5 million shares in the most recently reported period. Goldman Sachs Group lifted its position by 320,000 shares to just under 5.9% of shares, and BlackRock added modestly to reach 1.6%. The direction of travel among international institutions is mixed, with the largest domestic holder reducing while global passive and active names have been adding at the margin. Norges Bank Investment Management trimmed by 188,000 shares through June, moving in the same direction as ULTRO.
Valuation multiples offer limited comfort for either side. The trailing PE is 12.8, down about 1.4 points over the past week as the stock has sold off, and the EV/EBITDA of 6.1 has been roughly stable over the month. The ORTEX stock score of 45.4 reflects weak Quality and Value components, with return on capital employed a thin 3% and the f-score at a moderate 4.0. None of these readings point to a materially cheap or expensive entry; they describe a business where the market has been willing to hold a large short against a mid-single-digit earnings multiple.
The question now is whether today's print resolves the tension between a deeply embedded short position and a lending market that has almost no room left to absorb additional supply.
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