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GRPN enters its November earnings window with a sharp 11% weekly loss, even as the short sellers who dominated this name for months continue to pull back, creating an unusual setup where the stock falls while the bears retreat.
Short interest has eased to 28.6% of the free float, down from 31.4% a week ago and off a peak above 13 million shares in late September. The direction of travel is clear: shorts have covered roughly 1.1 million shares over the past month. What makes that notable is the price action running in the opposite direction. GRPN has fallen 11% over the past week and is down nearly 12% over the past month, closing at $16.57 on October 16. Bears are reducing exposure into weakness, not strength. The ORTEX short score remains locked at 80.0, placing the stock in the 2nd percentile of the full universe on that factor, so the structural bearish positioning is far from gone, but it is becoming less aggressive at the margin.
The borrow market tells the same loosening story more dramatically. Availability has jumped to 48.8%, up from roughly 13% a week ago and a fraction of the near-zero readings seen through mid-September, when the stock briefly exhausted the entire lending pool. Cost to borrow has fallen to 1.29%, down 32% on the week and nearly 39% over the past month. The 52-week minimum availability was 0.37%, so the current reading represents a genuine easing, not a minor adjustment. For shorts still in the trade, conditions are more comfortable than they have been all year. For potential new entrants, borrow is accessible in a way it simply was not six weeks ago.
Options traders are not signalling alarm in either direction. The put/call ratio of 0.29 is almost exactly in line with its 20-day average of 0.29, with a z-score of just 0.17. That puts the PCR near its 52-week low of 0.28, meaning options positioning remains skewed toward calls rather than puts despite the week's sell-off. The lack of defensive repositioning in the options market is the one data point that cuts against a straightforward bearish read of the price action.
The Street remains deeply divided. Goldman Sachs has maintained a Sell rating throughout 2026, with Eric Sheridan most recently raising his target to $13 in May after cutting it to $10 in March. That $13 target now sits below the current price of $16.57, making it one of the more bearish calls on the register. Bulls at Northland Capital Markets and Roth Capital have targets well above current levels, though those were set in 2025 and may not fully reflect the company's more recent guidance for billings declines of 2.5% to 5% and revenue drops of 5% to 7.5%. The mean analyst target of $28.67 implies significant upside from current prices, but the dispersion between bulls and bears is wide enough to make the consensus figure almost meaningless as a signal. The EV/EBITDA multiple of 8.2x and a PE of 8.5x are not obviously stretched, but the EPS surprise factor score of just 6 out of 100 suggests the company has a persistent history of disappointing relative to expectations.
The ownership picture adds another layer of complexity. Dusan Senkypl, the Pale Fire Capital-affiliated activist on a Schedule 13D, last disclosed a 32% stake in August, trimmed from 34.1% previously. His three filings since February 2025 mark him as the most active force in the register, and a 13D filer reducing exposure, even modestly, is worth tracking. Millennium Management doubled its position to just over 5% of shares as of August, while Divisadero Street Capital built a meaningful new stake last quarter. Continental General Insurance, by contrast, trimmed its holding by over 1.1 million shares as of June. The register is active on both sides. As with all 13D/G disclosures, these figures are as of last filing and holders dropping below the 5% threshold may exit without further notice.
Earnings are 20 days out, scheduled for November 6. The two most recent prints each produced one-day drops of roughly 8% to 9%, with five-day losses extending to 14% to 19%. With the stock already down 11% this week, the question heading into that date is whether the market has pre-empted some of the usual post-earnings pressure, or whether shorts who have been covering into weakness will rebuild positions ahead of the release.
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