Reliance Results Tomorrow With Short Sellers Relaxed

RIGD heads into Thursday's earnings print down 6% on the week and 5% on the month, but the short-selling community is showing no particular urgency to press that weakness.

The positioning picture is one of striking calm in the lending market. Availability is exceptionally loose at 1,563%, meaning there are roughly 15 shares available to borrow for every one already out on loan. That compares to a 52-week low availability of 574%, which was itself generous by any standard. Cost to borrow has edged up 10% over the past week to 0.58%, but that remains firmly in "low" territory, and the borrowing cost has been oscillating in a narrow band between 0.44% and 0.70% for the past six weeks. The ORTEX short score has also drifted lower, falling from 33.6 to 31.2 over the past ten days. That is a modest but consistent decline, suggesting short-seller conviction on the name has eased rather than built, even as the price has slid.

Analyst coverage is not a useful input this week. The most recent price target data in the system is dated October 2022, more than four years stale, and there have been no recent rating changes to report. On valuation, the trailing PE has compressed to roughly 20x, down from about 22.8x a month ago, reflecting the share price move more than any change in earnings expectations. The EV/EBITDA sits near 41.8x, though that figure also carries a March 2022 earnings date. Factor scores offer limited encouragement: EPS momentum ranks in the bottom 5% of the universe on both the 30-day and 90-day measures, and forward EPS estimates are ranked second percentile for year-on-year increase. The earnings yield factor, at the 61st percentile, and the dividend score, at the 59th percentile, are the more constructive readings, though dividends have not been updated since 2021.

Ownership is highly concentrated and stable. Four vehicles linked to the Ambani family group collectively account for roughly 35% of outstanding shares, each reporting unchanged positions as of March 2026. Life Insurance Corporation of India holds a further 6.7%. Among active institutional managers, SBI Funds added 4.1 million shares through August, ICICI Prudential added 3.9 million, and Nippon Life added 2.3 million in the same period. Norges Bank Investment Management trimmed 3.3 million shares through June. The net picture is modest domestic institutional accumulation, with no holder making a move large enough to shift the narrative.

What to watch now is tomorrow's Q2 result, specifically whether the refining margin and petrochemical demand picture that supported the 8.2% net profit growth reported for Q1 has held into the September quarter, or whether the continued slide in crude prices and the month-long softness in the GDR price have started to feed through to margins.