POSCO Holdings Drops 10% in a Month, Options Turn Bullish

PKX has shed about 10% over the past month, closing at $52.35, with 6% of that loss coming in the single session on October 22. The borrow market offers no signal of short-side pressure behind the move: cost to borrow has fallen roughly 40% over the past week to just 0.75%, and availability is running at more than 1,300%, meaning shares to lend vastly outnumber shares already borrowed. Short interest itself is a modest fraction of the float and has changed little in recent weeks, edging up around 4.6% over the month but down slightly on the week. The borrow picture looks loose rather than stressed.

What stands out more is options positioning, which is moving against the bearish price trend. The put/call ratio has fallen to 0.76, almost one and a half standard deviations below its 20-day average of 0.86. That reading sits closer to the 52-week low of 0.13 than to the recent peak of 1.23, suggesting options traders are buying calls rather than loading up on protection into the October 27 print. The divergence between a falling stock price and falling put demand is the central tension heading into earnings.

The most actionable analyst move on the stock came from UBS in April 2026, when Yong-Suk Son upgraded PKX to Buy from Neutral. The mean price target of $111 in the system is based on data from late 2023, and the current share price of $52.35 sits so far below it that the figure should be treated with caution rather than as a live consensus signal. What is cleaner is the factor picture: PKX ranks in the 86th percentile on EPS surprise, with a 90th-percentile dividend score, suggesting the company has a strong recent track record of beating estimates. Against that, forward EPS estimates point to a roughly 74% year-on-year decline in earnings growth, a near-term drag that explains why the stock's growth score has been a persistent weight. Earnings yield ranks in the 74th percentile, consistent with the deep discount to book value that has underpinned the value case for the stock for over a year.

BlackRock filed a passive Schedule 13G in April 2026 disclosing a stake of just over 5%, and subsequent reporting shows the position has grown to around 6.8% of shares as of September 30. That addition of roughly 137,000 shares over the latest reported period is a modest buy, consistent with index-related accumulation rather than a directional call. The National Pension Service remains the largest reported holder at nearly 9% of shares. Both positions are as last disclosed, and any holder that has since moved below 5% may not have filed an update.

After the July 2026 earnings, PKX jumped more than 9% on the day and extended that to roughly 15% over the following five sessions. The October 27 print will test whether a steel market recovery story can hold up against the pressure of sharply lower forward earnings estimates and a stock that is now more than $10 cheaper than it was before that July rally.