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Rivian heads into its October 27 earnings date with short sellers adding positions at the fastest pace in months, the stock down hard on the week, and no meaningful pressure in the lending market to force them out.
Short interest has accelerated since the previous note. It now stands at 14.1% of the free float, up from 12.7% a week ago in the October 5 piece. That jump reflects a genuine step-change: shares short rose 8.3% over the past week alone, the largest weekly increase in the 30-day window. The move pushed the short book back above 172 million shares, a new high for the period covered by the data. What makes this more notable is that borrow costs remain extremely cheap at 0.57%, up only 11% on the week. Shorts are not paying to hold. Availability is running at 162%, meaning roughly 1.6 shares remain available to borrow for every share already lent out. That is down from above 200% in late September as new shorts absorb some of the supply, but the lending market is nowhere near tight. There is no squeeze pressure here.
Options positioning cuts against the bearish grain. The put/call ratio has dropped to 0.91, now running about 1.4 standard deviations below its 20-day average of 0.95. For a stock being sold hard and heavily shorted, that is a notable divergence: options buyers are leaning toward calls, not puts. Whether that reflects hedged short positions, speculative pre-earnings longs, or something else entirely, it makes the positioning picture less straightforward than the short interest level alone would suggest.
The Street is broadly constructive but not uniformly so. The consensus sits at buy with a mean price target of $19, implying 42% upside to Tuesday's close of $13.37. That target comes with wide dispersion. Morgan Stanley carries an Underweight with a $14 target. Citigroup initiated in September at Neutral with an $18 target. TD Cowen holds a Buy at $21. The bull case rests on Rivian's software-defined platform, the Volkswagen JV, R2 production ramp, and a 2028 Uber robotaxi partnership as a high-margin optionality layer. The bear case is blunter: adjusted EBITDA guidance of negative $2.1 billion to negative $1.8 billion for the year, delivery guidance of 62,000 to 67,000 units, and an unprofitable business with high fixed costs and uncertain subsidy support. EPS momentum factor scores of 9 out of 100 on both the 30- and 90-day horizons reflect how sharply estimate revisions have moved against the company. The ORTEX short score has drifted higher across the past two weeks, reaching 71.0 as of October 12, placing the stock in the 6th percentile of its universe on short-score rank.
The real-economy data offers limited reassurance. California ZEV sales tracked by the California Energy Commission fell 42% against Q2 last year and have now declined for three consecutive quarters. Washington state recorded its smallest August for new battery-electric registrations since data collection began in 2022. In contrast, Colorado EV registrations via Atlas EV Hub have risen for 22 consecutive months, reaching 6,928 vehicles in July. None of the alt-data datasets covering Rivian have been shown to lead its reported financials, so these readings are texture rather than a guide to the print.
The stock is down 16.6% over the past month to $13.37. That compares poorly with close peer TSLA, which fell just 1.4% over the past week. XPEV gained 2.0% on the week, adding to the underperformance gap. The last quarterly print, on July 30, drove a 6.8% one-day decline. The one before that produced a 0.9% fall. Both subsequent five-day windows were negative too.
With 13 days to the October 27 print, the question is whether the gap between a call-heavy options market and a short book that just accelerated sharply will close before results, or whether the data itself becomes the arbiter.
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