NBIS Dips Further as Analysts Diverge and Options Turn Cautious

Nebius Group extends its slide to $188.41, down another 14% on the week, putting the stock 21% below the $232 to $244 range where the COO was selling two weeks ago.

Options positioning has become the most pointed signal this week. Put demand has risen above its recent baseline, with the put/call ratio at 0.93, roughly 1.5 standard deviations above its 20-day average of 0.89. That is not an extreme reading, the 52-week high is 1.30, but it is the most defensive the options market has been in over a month, and the direction of travel since early October is consistently higher. With Q3 earnings due November 12, traders appear to be adding downside coverage rather than chasing the rally that ran out of steam.

The short position has barely moved, which is itself notable given the price action. Short interest is 45.5 million shares, or 20.8% of free float, fractionally higher than last week and still within the narrow 44.9 to 46.9 million band it has occupied since mid-September. Bears are not pressing harder into the selloff, but they are not running either. Borrow availability has loosened further to 64%, the most open it has been in three weeks, and cost to borrow has eased to 0.58%, down more than 20% on the week and less than a third of where it stood a month ago. The ORTEX short score has remained locked between 68.0 and 68.7 for ten consecutive sessions. The picture is unchanged from the prior note: a large, orderly short base sitting in comfortable, cheap borrow with no sign of either a squeeze or a capitulation.

Analyst opinion is as divided as the price action would suggest. The bull camp, led by BNP Paribas (upgraded to Outperform with a $399 target in late September), Truist Securities ($355, Buy), Citigroup ($324, Buy) and Baird ($340, Outperform), points to the 454% year-on-year revenue growth in Q2, a $40 billion backlog and the $17 billion Microsoft agreement as evidence that demand is structurally secure. Rosenblatt initiated at Buy with a $304 target last week. Against that, Rothschild initiated at Sell with an $84 target in September, a number that looks startling against a $188 stock but reflects the bear case in concentrated form: negative free cash flow of $3.41 billion in Q2 alone, cash of $8 billion sitting against $8.55 billion of debt, and execution risk in scaling more than 1 GW of capacity per year. DA Davidson holds at Neutral with a $250 target. Earnings momentum factor scores are exceptional, ranking in the 95th and 99th percentiles over 30 and 90 days respectively, but the short score rank of 6 out of 100 and a deeply negative price-to-earnings ratio reflect the unprofitable, capital-hungry reality underneath the revenue growth.

The ownership register adds another layer of complexity. NVIDIA holds 9.3% on a Schedule 13G filed in July, a stake that reads as strategic alignment rather than financial speculation. Goldman Sachs filed an amended 13G on October 7, disclosing a reduction from 10.5% to 5.1%, which at current prices represents a meaningful reduction in exposure. Goldman's filing is as-last-disclosed around the 5% threshold, and further movement below that level would require no additional disclosure. Founder Arkady Volozh holds 10.7% and reported a small trim of 83,000 shares as of October 1. The COO's $90 million of pre-planned sales from October 5 and the Chief Revenue Officer's $1.5 million sale last week, both under 10b5-1 plans, bring 90-day net insider disposals to roughly 644,000 shares worth $152 million. No buying has appeared in the same window.

The last two earnings prints underscore the stock's sensitivity to results. Q2 produced a 32% single-day gain and a 16% five-day gain. The prior quarter moved the other way, down 21% on the day before recovering 20% over the following week. With 27 days to the November 12 print, the question is whether the bear case on cash burn and dilution, or the bull case on backlog and margin, carries more weight for an investor sitting on a stock that has now given back the bulk of its September gains.