Minerva Steadies After Brutal Week, Borrow Stays Locked

MRVS.Y bounced 5.7% on Tuesday but remains down 23% on the week, with the lending market still fully seized ahead of its November 11 earnings date.

The borrow picture is unchanged from the note published earlier today: availability is at zero, every share in the lending pool is lent out, and that condition has held almost without interruption since late September. Cost to borrow has drifted up to 2.73%, a 56% rise over the past week, though the figure remains far below the February 2026 peak of 12.4%. The key context is that short interest itself is trivial, roughly 0.002% of the free float. Zero availability here reflects thin OTC lending inventory, not a crowded bear position. New shorts wanting to press the 23% decline face a fully locked borrow market with no obvious relief valve.

The factor score picture is worth separating from the noise of the weekly move. Minerva ranks in the 99th percentile on earnings yield and in the 98th percentile on both EV/EBIT and days-to-cover, readings that put it among the cheapest and most financially constrained names in the ORTEX universe simultaneously. The dividend score at 94 is high, though dividend history on this ADR is stale, the last recorded payment was April 2022. The valuation data is similarly dated, so multiples should be treated as directional rather than precise. What the factor scores do confirm is that the stock screens as deep value on any earnings-based metric, while the 90-day EPS momentum rank of just 9 reflects how sharply forward estimates have been cut.

Institutional ownership is highly concentrated. VDQ Holdings and the Saudi Agricultural and Livestock Investment Company together account for roughly 54% of shares. BlackRock added 463,000 shares through September, and Dimensional added a further 79,000. Those are modest flows relative to the float, but they are the only recent active moves on a holder list that is otherwise static. The top two holders have reported no change in position as of late September.

The earnings reaction history adds an asymmetric note. The last two prints both produced next-day drops of around 4.4% to 4.7%, followed by five-day recoveries of roughly 9%. The May 2026 print was a cleaner loss of 8.8% on the day with no recovery over the following week. With the stock already down 20% over the past month, how much of any negative surprise is already reflected in the price is the question the November 11 print will answer.