Rémy Cointreau shorts ease ahead of tomorrow's earnings

RCO enters its November 3 earnings release with short sellers pulling back from recent extremes, even as the borrow market remains tighter than its longer-run average and the ORTEX short score stays firmly in bearish territory.

The most striking shift in the lending market has been in one direction: availability has loosened sharply over the past two weeks. On October 19, availability dropped to 13.9%, meaning fewer than one share was available for every seven already borrowed, the tightest the borrow market had been in months. Since then it has recovered to 47.0%, a 21% improvement on the week, suggesting some shorts have returned stock to the pool or that new supply has come in ahead of the print. That said, the 52-week low of 0.25% is a reminder of how extreme this name can get when bearish positioning peaks. Cost to borrow has also eased, now at 1.45%, its lowest reading in the 30-day window and down sharply from a local peak near 2.39% on October 14. Positioning looks less charged into earnings than it did a fortnight ago, but it is not loose.

The ORTEX short score of 84.6 places RCO in the top fraction of the universe for bearish signal intensity, and it has barely moved in the past two weeks, ranging from 84.6 to 85.2. That persistence matters: the score reflects a broad set of signals including EPS momentum factor ranks, where RCO scores in the 92nd percentile on 30-day EPS momentum and 83rd on 90-day momentum, both pointing to improving earnings estimates. Yet the earnings surprise rank is weak at the 23rd percentile, meaning the company has not historically beaten expectations with any consistency. Bulls and bears are essentially debating whether the estimate revision cycle has finally bottomed, or whether the improving momentum numbers are simply catching up to a low base. On valuation, the PE multiple of 25.4x has moved up 2.9 points over the past month as the stock rallied 18%, and EV/EBITDA of 13.9x has contracted 0.6 turns over the same period, compressing as earnings expectations have outrun the share price. Analyst data in the snapshot is too stale to be useful, dating from 2023.

The ownership picture is relatively clean but notable for one persistent buyer. ORPAR SA, a board member entity, accumulated more than 350,000 shares across three open-market purchases in late June and early July at prices between EUR 41.82 and EUR 42.79, well below the current EUR 50.65. That cluster of buying came shortly after the stock's 2026 low and has not been followed by any further disclosed purchases. The controlling family vehicle, Andromede S.A., holds 58.3% of the company and has not changed its position, locking in a stable majority. FMR (Fidelity) is the largest external institutional holder at 9.9% and added over 2.4 million shares as of its August report, a material accumulation that reinforces the view that at least one large active manager sees value at these levels.

Earnings history adds a further wrinkle. The July 2026 print produced a 1-day decline of 1.5% and a 5-day loss of 3.9%, a modest negative reaction on no clear beat. The June 2026 release, however, triggered an 11.4% surge on the day and 14.9% over five days, the sharpest positive reaction in recent memory. Peer performance this week is mixed: RI gained 0.1% on the week while BF.B and DGE fell around 2%, suggesting no strong sector-wide tailwind heading into the RCO number.

What to watch tomorrow is whether the sales trend in cognac and the trajectory of Chinese demand, the two variables that have driven the widest earnings dispersions for this stock, come in ahead of or behind a market that has already priced in a meaningful recovery through the 18% share-price gain of the past month.