NXT Heads Into Thursday Print With Bears Pulling Back

Nextpower heads into its October 30 earnings release with the short position still elevated but showing early signs of retreat, while options traders have swung unusually bullish, creating a split in the positioning picture.

The short side has pulled back from its recent peak. Short interest reached roughly 10.1 million shares at the end of last week before edging down to 9.97 million by October 27, still 6.7% of the free float and up about 16% from a month ago. The previous ORTEX note flagged this build accelerating through October, and the peak appears to have been touched. Borrow conditions remain frictionless: availability is running at 535%, meaning roughly five shares are available in the lending pool for every one currently borrowed, and the cost to borrow has dropped 16% on the week to 0.46%. Nothing in the lending market is pressuring existing short positions.

Options positioning tells a contrasting story. Call demand has picked up sharply relative to recent norms. The put/call ratio dropped to 0.69, almost 1.7 standard deviations below its 20-day average of 0.76, and close to the lowest reading of the past year. That is an unusual tilt toward upside positioning heading into a print. Combined with the stock's 3.3% gain on October 28, the market is leaning more optimistic than it was last week, when the stock had shed around 11%.

The analyst community has been uniformly cutting targets in the run-up, but has not changed its bullish direction. JPMorgan trimmed its price objective to $136 from $152 on October 19 while keeping an Overweight rating. Citigroup followed with a reduction to $111 from $121 on October 21, also retaining Buy. BMO and Barclays made similar moves: lower targets, unchanged positive ratings. The consensus mean target is $132, against a current price of $82, implying the Street still sees substantial upside even after the cuts. Bulls point to Nextpower's 63% year-on-year revenue growth in Q3, the 11% lift to full-year EBITDA guidance, and a $5 billion backlog. Bears flag the potential for U.S. solar installation volumes to peak around 55 GW in 2027 and compress to 30-35 GW annually thereafter, which would pressure the growth trajectory that underpins those targets.

One historical data point is worth noting: the last time Nextpower reported, in August, the stock fell 7% on the day and 14% over the following five sessions. That reaction followed a period when short interest was lower and positioning was less charged than it is today. The earnings report will therefore test whether the combination of a rebuilt short position and unusually bullish options skew reflects a well-founded recovery in confidence, or simply contradictory signals heading into what remains a binary catalyst for a stock trading at a wide discount to analyst consensus.