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CRCL heads into its November 4 earnings date with short interest at its highest level in months, even as the borrow market remains loose enough to suggest no squeeze pressure is building.
Short positioning has climbed sharply over the past month. At 12.9% of the free float, short interest is up 35% over the past 30 days, with a further 3.7% increase on the week. That is a meaningful accumulation. The move has been almost uninterrupted since mid-September, when the short count was running closer to 18 to 19 million shares. It has since grown to over 28 million. The ORTEX short score has edged up to 62.2, near the top of its recent range, reflecting that build. Yet the borrow market tells a different story. Availability is broad at 234%, meaning there are more than two shares available to lend for every one already borrowed. Cost to borrow is just 0.47%, low enough that short sellers are paying almost nothing to hold positions. Availability has tightened over the week (it was closer to 280% a month ago) but remains far from any stress level. The setup looks like a deliberate positional build rather than a short squeeze candidate.
The Street is divided, and the division runs wide. Needham and Canaccord maintain Buy ratings with targets of $127 and $130 respectively, implying 50% or more of upside from current levels. Morgan Stanley sits at the other end, carrying an Underweight rating with a $37 target, just under half today's price of $84.27. Between those poles, KBW initiated at Market Perform with a $105 target in September, and Wolfe Research holds Underperform but raised its target from $50 to $65. The mean analyst target is around $107, which implies roughly 27% upside, but the distribution of views is unusually wide for a stock of this maturity. Valuation is not cheap: the trailing P/E sits near 60x and EV/EBITDA near 24.6x, both of which have compressed modestly over the past month. Factor scores paint a cautious picture, with EPS momentum ranking in the bottom decile and valuation also scoring poorly, while the short score rank of 10 out of 100 confirms that bearish positioning relative to peers is elevated.
The bull and bear cases reflect a business at an inflection point. USDC circulation grew 72% year-on-year to $75.3 billion in Q4 2025, and Circle's share of stablecoin transaction volume rose from 39% to nearly 50% over that same period. Total revenue hit $770 million, up 77% year-on-year. Bears, however, point to the rate sensitivity of the model: reserve yield revenues fall as interest rates decline, and the market is already discounting lower rates into the out-years. Adoption of the Circle Payments Network has also been slower than hoped, and competition in the stablecoin space is intensifying.
Institutional ownership adds some context to the short buildup. BlackRock added 3.3 million shares in the quarter ending September 30, bringing its stake to 3.3% of shares. ARK Investment Management added 1.6 million shares over the same period. State Street and Morgan Stanley Investment Management have also been adding. On the other side, CEO Jeremy Allaire has been a consistent seller under a 10b5-1 plan, trimming around 11,000 shares on October 5 at prices in the $82 to $85 range. Those sales are pre-arranged and carry a low signal weight, but the net insider position across 90 days is negative at roughly minus 110,000 shares and minus $9.3 million in value. IDG Capital, the largest institutional holder at 6.8% of shares, trimmed 138,000 shares as of the June 30 report.
Historical earnings reactions at CRCL have been sharply positive. The August 19 print produced a 17% single-day gain and a 25% move over the subsequent five days. An earlier release on August 10 generated a 7% one-day jump and nearly 12% over five days. Those are large moves in both directions of time, and with short interest now running at 12.9% of float, a strong print could create meaningful pressure on short holders who would need to cover quickly in a thinly borrowed market.
With the next earnings date confirmed for November 4 and short interest at a multi-month peak, the question heading into the print is whether the bear case on rate sensitivity and payments-network adoption outweighs the stablecoin growth numbers Circle is likely to report.
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