Six Flags: Short Sellers Pile In After Earnings Rout

FUN enters the week in an unusual position: a stock that jumped 26% on earnings day is now being shorted at nearly 28% of the float, with insiders buying millions of dollars of shares in the open market at the same time.

The post-earnings numbers tell a complicated story. The stock surged 26% on November 5 when results landed, then gave back 5.6% on Tuesday alone, closing at $10.16. The one-week gain is still a striking 36%, but the one-month picture is down 11%, which captures how far the stock had fallen before the bounce. Short sellers are treating the rally as an opportunity. ORTEX estimates short interest jumped 19% in a single session on November 10, bringing the total to 28.1 million shares, or 27.7% of the free float. That is up 18% over the past week and 28% over the past month. This is a heavily shorted name, and the shorts are growing more aggressive, not less, despite the post-earnings pop.

The borrow market tells a different story from that short interest level. Availability is running at 175%, meaning there are roughly 1.75 shares available to lend for every one already borrowed. That is well off the tightest point of the past year and indicates the lending pool is not under pressure. Cost to borrow is minimal at 0.43%, down slightly over the week. Shorts can add to positions cheaply and easily, which is precisely what appears to be happening. The ORTEX short score has climbed to 71.6, near the top of its recent range, confirming the bearish tilt in positioning. Options are more neutral: the put/call ratio at 0.80 is barely above its 20-day average of 0.80, with a z-score of just 0.14, well within normal. Options traders are not adding to the bearish conviction.

The Street has responded to recent developments with near-universal target cuts. JP Morgan slashed its target from $22 to $12 on November 9, keeping a Neutral rating. Citigroup cut from $13 to $10 the same day, also at Neutral. Barclays trimmed from $22 to $13 on November 6, holding its Overweight. Goldman Sachs, in late October, cut most aggressively of all, dropping its Neutral target from $15 to $6. The mean analyst target now sits at $15, against a stock price of $10.16, implying notional upside, but the direction of travel on targets has been sharply downward across the board. The bear case is well-documented: attendance expected to decline 4% in Q3 and 6% in Q4, the Georgia incident in October triggering ride closures and negative press, and Q4 EBITDA guidance cut to $143 million from $185 million. The bull case rests on 92 additional operating days in the back half, a new CEO with theme-park credentials, and technology-driven spending growth, with pro forma EBITDA modeled up 17% from 2025 to 2027. EV/EBITDA has edged up to 8.1x, still a discount to the broader leisure sector at around 9.3x. The factor picture is mixed: earnings yield ranks in the 90th percentile, an extreme value signal, while EPS momentum over both 30 and 90 days ranks in the bottom 15th percentile, capturing the aggressive downward revisions from the analyst community.

The most striking signal this week is insider buying, and it comes from a single name: Rehan Jaffer, a director who filed a Schedule 13D in April 2025 and already held 4.9 million shares as of mid-June. On November 6 he bought 700,000 shares at $10.00 for $7 million. On November 9 he added another 350,000 at $10.86 for $3.8 million. On November 10, the day shorts spiked 19%, he bought a further 400,000 shares at $10.32 for $4.1 million. That is $14.9 million across three consecutive trading days, all discretionary, with no 10b5-1 plan declared. Executive Chair Richard Haddrill and Chief Legal Officer Christopher Bennett also made small open-market purchases on November 6. Net insider buying over 90 days totals $15.3 million. Jaffer's 13D designation means he has declared activist intent, though the most recent filing dates to April 2025 and shows a stake of 4.98%, just at the disclosure threshold. As always with 13D/G positions, stakes are as last disclosed, and a holder dropping below 5% may not file again. BlackRock holds 15.6% and was adding shares as recently as October 30. Sachem Head Capital and Dendur Capital each hold roughly 4.9%, both unchanged through the last reported period.

The next earnings date is February 18, 2027, leaving 99 days for the debate between Jaffer's conviction buying and the short sellers piling in to play out. What matters between now and then is whether Q4 attendance data, holiday event performance, and any update on the Georgia incident begin to resolve which side of that trade has the read right.