Hemnet Faces Index Exit Risk as Shorts Step Back

Hemnet heads into the final weeks of November with an unusual combination pulling in opposite directions: short sellers have been quietly retreating from the stock even as an index deletion looms that could force mechanical selling of around $14 million in shares.

The lending market tells a story of easing pressure. Availability has loosened dramatically over the past six weeks, running at nearly 400% now compared with 145% at the end of September, meaning there is roughly four times as much stock available to borrow as is currently borrowed short. That is a sharp reversal from late September, when the borrow market was at its tightest of the past year. Cost to borrow has drifted lower too, falling around 10% over the past month to just above 1%, a level that signals no particular urgency among short sellers. The ORTEX short score, at 70.3, remains elevated in absolute terms but has been broadly stable over the past two weeks after peaking near 70.6. Shorts are not rushing for the exits, but they are not adding pressure either.

The more concrete near-term catalyst is the December index review. ORTEX puts the probability of Hemnet being deleted from the OMX Stockholm Benchmark at 63%, with the announcement due November 23 and the trade date set for November 30. The key price line is 82.74 SEK: Hemnet needs to close above that level to flip the call. The stock closed at 74.6 SEK on November 6, roughly 8% below the exit threshold. The implied $14 million in forced selling represents about 3.4 days of normal trading volume. In 32 similar past deletions tracked by ORTEX, the median move from announcement to effective date was minus 2.3%, with 72% of cases moving in that direction, and trade-day volume ran at 9.3 times normal. Those are historical patterns, not a forecast for this instance.

The Street is cautious without being outright negative. The consensus sits at hold with seven hold ratings and two outperform calls. The mean price target of around 98 SEK implies meaningful upside from current levels, but that data is now 15 days old and should be treated with some care given recent price weakness. Factor scores add nuance: EPS surprise ranks in the 66th percentile, a decent record for beating estimates, but EPS momentum over both 30 and 90 days is deeply weak, ranking in the 10th and 15th percentiles respectively. The stock's PE has expanded about 3.2 points over the past month to 15.3x as the price has fallen faster than earnings have been revised. The short score rank of 5 reflects the elevated bearish signal, while the dividend score of 95 looks more like an artefact of the valuation than a yield story, given the last confirmed dividend dates to 2022.

Insider activity has been consistently one-directional. Chairman Henrik Lönnevi bought 20,000 shares at 80 SEK on October 22, the largest single insider purchase in the visible record, shortly after Q3 results. The CFO bought 3,510 shares at 90.29 SEK in August. The CEO added shares in May. Net insider purchases over the past 90 days total 23,510 shares, all on the buy side, all at prices well above where the stock trades today. The pattern of insiders buying at higher prices and the stock continuing to slide is a tension the market has not resolved.

Hemnet posted a 3.1% gain on the day of its October 22 results but gave back most of that move over the following five days, closing the week down 2.2%. With earnings now not due until late January 2027, the index review announcement on November 23 becomes the next significant date on the calendar, alongside whether the stock can close above 82.74 SEK before the October 30 rank date has passed and the December review is effectively decided.