Polestar Heads Into Results With Borrow Costs at 182% and MSCI Deletion Looming

PSNY reports Q3 results on November 5 carrying one of the most stressed borrow profiles in the EV sector, a shelf of measured registration data pointing in opposite directions, and an index overhang that could force $11 million of mechanical selling weeks after the print.

The borrow market tells the sharpest part of the pre-earnings story. Availability has tightened to just 7.74%, meaning fewer than eight shares remain available for every hundred already lent out, and the cost to borrow has spiked to 182% annually. That cost is nearly five times where it stood at the end of September (30.9%), though it has eased from a recent peak above 265%. The ORTEX short score ranks in the 97th percentile (80.8 out of 100), one of the most bearish readings across the platform. Options positioning reinforces the caution: the put/call ratio is running at 1.34, broadly in line with its elevated 20-day average of 1.37, keeping it well above the neutral zone even after the stock clawed back 11.7% over the past week. That weekly bounce follows a 38% collapse over the prior month, leaving the shares at $4.10.

The analyst debate is almost entirely one-sided. Both active coverage firms rate PSNY Underweight. Barclays cut its price target from $15 to $5 in early October, citing deteriorating fundamentals. The consensus mean target is $7.50, which implies significant upside from current levels, but that figure should be read alongside the bear case rather than against it. The gross margin print from Q2 2025, negative 97.2%, was catastrophically worse than estimates, and the bear case centres on whether ASP cuts can drive volume fast enough to offset that structural cost problem. The bull case points to the South Korea production ramp, roughly $2.1 billion in secured and renewed loan facilities, and the shift to an active selling model. There is very little middle ground in the current analyst community.

Polestar's own European registration data, tracked by ORTEX Alt Data, sends a split signal heading into the print. Dutch passenger-car registrations, which have been measured to lead Polestar's quarterly revenue by 60 days with a strong fit across 21 quarters, ran 37% below the same quarter last year through all three months of Q3. German registrations, also a measured revenue lead (50-day lag, 18 quarters), moved in the opposite direction, up 32% year-on-year over the same window. Finnish registrations, a third measured lead (76-day lag), came in 5% lower than a year ago. Austrian data, a fourth measured series (78-day lag, though the fit is weak), showed a 49% year-on-year gain. All four series are complete for the Q3 window. The divergence between markets, Germany sharply up, the Netherlands sharply down, makes a clean directional read difficult.

Beyond the earnings, an index overhang is developing in parallel. ORTEX's Index Rebalance Radar puts the probability of PSNY being deleted from multiple MSCI indices, including the MSCI World IMI and MSCI EAFE, at 68%. The stock closed at $4.10, already 18.8% below the $4.80 price at which the index rule would flip the call. An announcement is due November 11, with a trade date of November 30. That would require index trackers to sell roughly $11 million worth of stock, equivalent to about 10 days of normal volume. The earnings print on November 5 arrives six days before that announcement, meaning the results could move the stock either toward or further away from the retention threshold.

The print is therefore testing whether Q3 delivery volumes and gross margin show any improvement from Q2's historic deterioration, and whether management guidance is credible enough to hold the stock above the price at which passive selling becomes a near-certainty.