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Nebius Group has shed 9% over the past week to $221.07, reversing a chunk of the prior week's gains, and for the first time in months the short position has actually moved in the bears' favour.
The shift in short interest is the week's most meaningful data change. Short interest fell modestly on the week, down 2.2% to 45.5 million shares, or 20.8% of free float. That number has been remarkably sticky since early September, so the move itself is less interesting than its direction: this is the first week in six that the short base has not held or grown as the stock rallied. Over the past month, short interest is down 14%, tracking the stock's pullback rather than fighting it. What has also changed is borrow availability. Availability has loosened to 61% from around 45% a week ago, meaning more shares have come back into the lending pool. Cost to borrow has drifted lower too, now 0.55%, down 8% on the week and roughly a third of where it was a month ago. The ORTEX short score has stayed in a tight 68 to 68.7 band for the past ten sessions, consistent with the prior two notes. The broader picture remains the same: a large but orderly short position, with cheap and accessible borrow. Options are equally calm. The put/call ratio of 0.88 is fractionally below its 20-day average of 0.89, with a z-score near zero, well inside the year's range of 0.55 to 1.30. Neither the borrow market nor the options market is flashing urgency in either direction.
The Street is broadly constructive but increasingly split on valuation. The consensus is Buy, with a mean target of $283.60 against Friday's close of $221.07, implying roughly 28% upside. Rosenblatt initiated last week with a Buy and a $304 target. That came on the heels of William Blair initiating at Outperform and BNP Paribas upgrading to Outperform with a $399 target in late September, a notably aggressive call. Set against that, Rothschild initiated with a Sell and an $84 target in September, and DA Davidson has held a Neutral rating throughout. The bull case centres on Nebius's AI-native cloud platform, 454% year-on-year revenue growth to $582 million in Q2, a committed backlog above $40 billion, and the $17 billion Microsoft agreement signed in September 2025. The bear case is equally stark: guided capex of $20 billion to $25 billion this year against $3.0 billion to $3.4 billion of revenue, internal control weaknesses over fixed assets, and a base-case adjusted operating margin of negative 28% in 2026. EV/EBITDA has compressed by 1.3 turns over the past 30 days, and the price-to-book ratio has pulled back by about 0.8 turns over the same period, consistent with the stock's monthly decline. EPS momentum factor scores remain exceptionally strong at 95 for the 30-day reading and 99 for 90 days, but the analyst recommendation dispersion score ranks in the 100th percentile, meaning the Street has rarely been more divided on a name.
Ownership data adds another layer of texture. NVIDIA holds 9.3% of shares as last disclosed in a July 13G filing, a stake that underlines the strategic rather than purely financial interest some large holders have in Nebius. Goldman Sachs added 3.2 million shares in the most recently reported period to reach 4.65% of shares, while BlackRock added 1.6 million shares to reach 4.2%. At the other end, Orbis Investment Management has reduced its disclosed stake from 5.9% to 1.5% since its February filing. No 13D activist is on the register. The COO's $90 million of 10b5-1 plan sales on October 5, flagged in the prior note, remain the most recent insider activity, and the 90-day net disposal figure of 673,000 shares for $159 million in proceeds stands without any offsetting purchases.
Earnings history on this stock is unusually dramatic. The August 2026 print produced a one-day gain of 32% and a five-day gain of 16%. The prior quarter's print, in late July, produced a one-day loss of 21% before recovering 20% over the following five days. The next event is November 12. With 31 days to go, the stock is now trading roughly 12% below where the COO was selling a week ago.
The question heading into November is whether the short base, which has proven remarkably patient through a 164% year-to-date rally, begins to cover more actively on the further price weakness, or whether it rebuilds as execution risk around the capex programme comes back into focus.
See the live data behind this article on ORTEX.
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