Stories are generated from ORTEX data and reviewed by the ORTEX team. How we publish
GRPN heads into November earnings with short interest near historic highs, an activist on the register, and options traders more bullish than they have been all year.
Short sellers remain deeply committed to the bearish case, but the trend is turning. Short interest has edged down roughly 2.3% over the past week to 31.4% of the free float, with the month-over-month reading still up 2.2%. That 31% level keeps GRPN among the most heavily shorted names on the market, and the ORTEX short score of 80.8 reflects that, placing it in the bottom 2nd percentile on that factor across the universe. Yet borrow conditions have loosened materially. Cost to borrow has fallen nearly 43% over the past week to 1.34%, its lowest point in the 30-day window shown. Availability has also opened up, moving from roughly 8% two weeks ago to 21% now, still tight by any measure, but meaningfully less so than the near-zero readings that persisted through mid-September. The lending market is telling a less panicked story than the headline short figure suggests.
Options positioning cuts against the short narrative. The put/call ratio of 0.28 is near a 52-week low, with the 52-week high standing at 0.86. At 1.1 standard deviations below its 20-day mean, this is the most call-skewed options market GRPN has seen in a year. That combination, heavy short positioning in the equity lending market alongside light put demand in options, creates the conditions for episodic covering pressure.
The Street is deeply split, and the most recent bellwether move is unmistakably bearish. Goldman Sachs' Eric Sheridan maintained a Sell rating in May and raised his target to $13 after previously cutting it to $10 in March. The mean target across the analyst community sits around $28.67, well above the current price of $18.84, but that aggregate masks a wide dispersion between bulls at Northland Capital Markets and Roth Capital, who have set targets in the $44 to $47 range, and Sheridan's $13. The PE multiple has contracted about half a point over the past week to 8.8x, while EV/EBITDA has slipped to 8.5x. The bear case centres on guidance that already called for billings to fall 2.5% to 5% and revenue to fall 5% to 7.5%, with cash flow uncertainty complicating any debt refinancing. Bulls counter with bookings growth and cash conversion progress. The EPS surprise factor score sits at just the 6th percentile, so GRPN has not been a company that tends to beat estimates.
The ownership register is one of the most distinctive features of this stock. A Schedule 13D activist filing is on record from Dusan Senkypl, who most recently disclosed a 32% stake in August 2026, trimmed from 34.1%. A 13D flag means the filer has declared active intent, making Senkypl the dominant force in the shareholder base. Pale Fire Capital holds a further 25% as of August 2026, and co-founder Eric Lefkofsky sits at 9.7%. Together, these three names account for more than 40% of shares, leaving the remaining float heavily contested between the short sellers and a cluster of recently active institutional names: Millennium Management built a fresh 5% stake filed in August, Divisadero Street Capital added around 1.4 million shares to reach 4.5%, and Wolf Hill Capital Management opened a new 2.5% position. That is a lot of fresh institutional buying running directly into a 31% short interest. As always, 13D/G stakes are as-last-disclosed around the 5% threshold, and holders dropping below that level may not file again.
Earnings history compounds the setup. The last print on August 7 delivered a one-day drop of 8.7% and a five-day loss of 14.5%. The prior print produced comparable damage, with a one-day fall of 8.3% and a five-day decline of 19.5%. The next event is scheduled for November 6, now 30 days away.
Wikipedia attention for GRPN has spiked to a z-score of 3.98 against its own 90-day history, a significant pickup in retail interest. This is an attention signal rather than a financial lead, there are no measured datasets linking traffic to revenue in the alt data coverage.
What to watch between now and November 6 is whether the recent easing in borrow availability reverses as the print approaches, and whether the activist Senkypl files any amendment that signals a change in strategy or stake direction.
See the live data behind this article on ORTEX.
Open GRPN on ORTEX →ORTEX Market Intelligence content is generated by AI from a snapshot of ORTEX's proprietary data and reviewed by the ORTEX team. Content is informational only and does not constitute investment advice.
