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Hertz Global Holdings is approaching its November 5 earnings date with borrow costs surging to a new high and short interest continuing to grind upward, even as the stock sits flat on the week.
The single most striking development since the October 12 stock report is what happened to cost to borrow. It more than doubled in a single session, jumping from 9.25% on October 12 to 23.13% on October 13. That is a 188% rise on the week and more than four times the level that prevailed through most of September. The cost-to-borrow has now risen more than 300% over the past month. Availability remains at zero across every session tracked, meaning every share in the lending pool is lent out and has been for weeks. There is no slack left in the borrow market, and the cost of maintaining a short position is rising sharply even before any new shares become available.
Short interest has continued to build. The position stood at 125.9 million shares on October 13, equivalent to 40.4% of free float. That is up nearly 5% on the week and up 18.7% over the past month. The ORTEX short score held at 75.5, close to where it has traded since early October, confirming that the short pressure is consistent rather than spiking. What changed this week was not the size of the position but its cost: shorts are paying significantly more to stay in the trade. Days-to-cover from the most recent FINRA fortnightly data stands at 10.58, a figure that reflects just how long it would take to unwind a position of this scale at normal volumes.
Options positioning offers a contrasting read. The put/call ratio has dropped to 0.86, more than a full standard deviation below its 20-day mean of 0.97. For most of September and early October, the ratio ran above 1.0, reflecting heavy demand for downside protection. The shift lower this week suggests options traders are becoming less defensive relative to recent norms, even as the short book grows. The 52-week range on the PCR runs from 0.66 to 2.31, so the current reading is not at a bullish extreme, but the direction of travel this week diverges from what the borrow market is signaling.
The Street is uniformly cautious. Analyst coverage has shifted steadily bearish through 2026, with all recent moves being target cuts. Morgan Stanley's Adam Jonas lowered his target to $3.00 from $3.50 in September, maintaining Equal-Weight. Goldman Sachs carries a Sell rating with a $2.00 target, while Barclays holds Underweight with a $1.00 target, the lowest on the Street. The consensus mean target of around $2.22 sits modestly above the current price of $1.92, but that average is dragged up by the more generous Neutral-rated names. With the stock down 6.8% on the week and roughly 6% over the past month, the valuation story offers little counterweight: the EV/EBITDA multiple of 40x is stretched for a company generating losses, and the EPS surprise factor score ranks in the 5th percentile of the universe.
Ownership is concentrated in a way that matters. CK Amarillo LP, the Knighthead Capital Management vehicle, filed a Schedule 13D amendment on October 5 and holds 50.9% of the company. Knighthead has an activist stake on the register, one of the most consequential structural facts about this stock. The company cannot be easily moved by the open market while its largest shareholder controls the majority of shares and has demonstrated willingness to file amended 13D disclosures. BlackRock added roughly 1.9 million shares in its most recent filing, bringing its position to 5.7% of shares. Pershing Square remains a holder at just over 4%.
The historical earnings reaction data here is thin but notable. The only comparable print in the current cycle, the August 6 Q3 result, produced a 45.5% single-day gain and a 50.3% five-day move. That outcome was extreme by any measure. With Q3 results now 22 days away and the short position at 40% of float with zero available shares to borrow, the setup into November 5 is the next thing to watch: specifically whether cost to borrow holds at current elevated levels or continues to move, and whether the PCR stabilises or reverts to the defensive posture that characterised September.
See the live data behind this article on ORTEX.
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