Lucid Shorts Hold Firm as Earnings Land Thursday

Lucid Group has 31.8% of its free float sold short, a position that has grown 13.4% over the past month and shows no sign of unwinding with Q3 results due Thursday evening.

The borrow market tells the same story as the short interest figures. Availability has collapsed to 1.4%, meaning fewer than one and a half shares remain for every hundred already borrowed. That is the second-tightest reading of the past year. On two separate days last week, availability touched 0.13% and 0.19%, close to the practical floor. Cost to borrow has doubled over the past month to 15.2%, though it has pulled back from the 23.8% peak reached on 22 October. FINRA's fortnightly settlement data puts the confirmed short count at 99.7 million shares, with days-to-cover at 9.7. The short score has drifted up to 87.2 from 85.7 two weeks ago, ranking in the bottom 1st percentile of its universe on that measure. This is not positioning that is being trimmed ahead of a catalyst.

The options market has moved in a different direction. The put/call ratio fell to 1.55 on the most recent reading, nearly two and a half standard deviations below its 20-day average of 1.78. That is the lowest PCR reading of the past year, sitting well beneath the 52-week low of 0.90 on a normalised basis, suggesting options traders have rotated away from downside hedges even as the short position has grown. The two camps are pointing opposite ways into Thursday's print.

The Street is broadly negative. Morgan Stanley lowered its target to $3.00, matching the current price, in mid-October, maintaining Underweight. RBC cut from $7 to $4 the same week. Both moves came after a prolonged sequence of target reductions across multiple firms. The mean price target across the analyst universe is $7.39, though the two freshest cuts leave the stock essentially at the floor of active coverage. The bear case centres on an adjusted EBITDA loss of $773 million, $1.4 billion of free cash flow burn, suspended 2026 guidance, and persistently negative gross margins. Bulls point to orders more than doubling over a two-month window earlier in 2026, a liquidity runway that management extended to the second half of 2027 through roughly $4.7 billion pro forma, and an Uber partnership targeting at least 35,000 Lucid vehicles.

The ownership structure is also worth noting. Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund holds a 13D activist stake, last disclosed at 56.85% of the class, down from 60.77% at the prior filing in April. PIF's shares-held figure in the institutional table sits at 177 million, a discrepancy from the 13D figure that reflects different reporting dates. The Schedule 13D/G disclosure note applies: stakes are as-last-disclosed around the 5% threshold, and movements below that level may not trigger a further filing. Uber Technologies filed a 13G in April disclosing an 11.52% stake, making it the second-largest external holder on that register.

The stock closed at $3.02 on Tuesday, down 8.8% over the past week. Peer RIVN gained 12.4% over the same period. XPEV added 4.1%. The last four earnings prints on record each produced a one-day decline, the most recent two falling 10.3% and 13.0% respectively. Thursday's Q3 release is the next fixed point around which the gap between the short position and the options market will have to resolve itself.