Stories are generated from ORTEX data and reviewed by the ORTEX team. How we publish
HUT presents a sharply divided picture this week: short sellers have continued adding to positions through a modest stock recovery, while analysts have flooded in with new coverage, all bullish, all with targets well above the current price.
Short interest has now climbed to 15.6% of the free float, with 16.9 million shares held short. That is up roughly 23% by share count since late August and marks another step higher from the 15.5% reading flagged in last week's note. The build has continued even as the stock edged 3.7% higher on the week to $89.30, meaning bears are not covering into strength. Cost to borrow eased slightly to 0.49%, down about 3% on the week, and remains cheap in absolute terms. Borrow availability, though it has tightened from the 773% reading a week ago, is still wide at 537% of short interest. There are still roughly five shares available for every one already borrowed. The short build remains demand-driven rather than a squeeze in progress. Options positioning reinforces the picture of a market that is not especially anxious: the put/call ratio is 0.43, marginally below its 20-day mean of 0.44 and nearly one standard deviation on the call-heavy side, which is the opposite of defensive hedging.
The Street, by contrast, has been unambiguously constructive. Roth Capital reinstated coverage this morning with a Buy and a $108 target, the most grounded of a cluster of recent initiations. Canaccord Genuity maintained its Buy at $130. UBS launched coverage last month at Buy with a $143 target. Wells Fargo went Overweight at $175, the most aggressive target in the recent wave. The only exception is Rothschild, which started at Neutral with a $96 target, barely above the current price. Of the 16 analysts tracked, all carry Buy-equivalent ratings, and the consensus target is $154, implying around 72% upside from here. That gap between price and target reflects both the bull case and the risk embedded in it: bulls point to the power-first AI and HPC leasing strategy, citing nearly $27 billion of aggregate lease payments contracted through around 2043 and an expanding pipeline of roughly 8.7 gigawatts of capacity. Bears counter that the Compute segment's dependence on bitcoin mining and GPU demand makes the earnings base fragile, with loss estimates for 2026 and 2027 having been cut further since the August print. EV/EBITDA has compressed nearly 16 points over the past 30 days, consistent with a market reassessing near-term earnings trajectory after two consecutive earnings prints that sent the stock down more than 10% and 17% respectively on the day.
Ownership carries one notable flag. Michael Ho filed a Schedule 13D amendment on September 30, disclosing a 5.13% stake of 6.3 million shares. A 13D signals active intent rather than passive holding, making it one of the more consequential items on the register. Alongside that, BlackRock added 845,000 shares in the most recent quarter to reach a 7.7% stake, and T. Rowe Price added 1.7 million shares to reach 3%. Coatue Management holds the largest position at 7.9%. On the insider side, the net picture over the past 90 days is negative: a director sold $2 million of stock in September at $100, and the CFO sold around $507,000 in late August, both discretionary sales with no 10b5-1 plan attached. There have been no open-market purchases.
Retail attention has also picked up. Wikipedia page views relative to HUT's own 90-day history carry a z-score of 1.7, a meaningful uptick in informal attention, though this is an attention signal rather than a revenue or fundamental indicator.
With earnings scheduled for November 4, the next 27 days will test whether the short build is positioning ahead of another disappointing print or simply a crowded hedge against bitcoin price volatility, and whether the analyst target gap gives the stock room to breathe or is simply a ceiling that keeps moving further out of reach.
See the live data behind this article on ORTEX.
Open HUT 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.
