Lime Shorts Double, Borrow Dries Up Before Earnings

Short sellers have nearly doubled their position in LIME over the past month. Estimated short interest reached 3.18 million shares on November 2, up 97% from roughly 1.6 million shares five weeks earlier. The week-on-week rise of 38% is the sharpest single-week acceleration in the available history.

Availability in the lending market has collapsed alongside that build. At the start of October, around 25 to 45 shares remained available to borrow for every 100 already lent out. By October 27 that had fallen to under 2. By October 30 it had reached 0.085%, the lowest reading in the 52-week data, meaning virtually every share in the lending pool was already lent. The most recent reading, November 2, is 0.28%. Cost to borrow is running at 9.37%, little changed from the month's range of 8.3% to 10.8%, but that stability reflects a market where new shorts are struggling to find inventory rather than one where borrow pressure has eased.

The shares closed at $25.48 on November 3, up 13% on the day and 6% on the week, pulling back from a one-month loss of 6%. That late surge matters for the borrow picture: when LIME last reported, in August, the stock jumped 25% on the day and 42% over the five sessions that followed. The ORTEX short score has climbed to 73.7, up from 64.4 ten days ago, reflecting the combination of rising short interest and near-zero availability.

The borrow market's abrupt tightening, a lending pool that went from open to effectively closed in roughly ten days, is what the print will now test against.