GGBR4 heads into its Q1 2026 results today carrying one of the cleanest short-side setups in Brazilian steel: bears have almost entirely stood down.
Short interest has collapsed to just 0.008% of the free float, down from a local peak of 0.032% in early April when the tariff shock briefly dragged the stock lower. That retreat in short positioning tracks almost perfectly with the price recovery — GGBR4 has surged 19% over the past month to BRL 21.66. Utilization is negligible at under 1%, a fraction of the 52-week high of 5.84% touched earlier this month during the broader market stress. Borrow costs are running at roughly 5%, elevated versus the 0.9–1.5% range seen late last year, but the volume of actual short activity is too small for that to mean much. Positioning is not charged; it is almost absent.
The bull case rests on valuation and a dividend track record that looks compelling for a cyclical. The stock trades at 8.8x earnings and 0.75x book — multiples consistent with a deeply discounted industrial, not a quality compounded. The EV/EBITDA multiple of 4.4x has compressed 10% over the past month as the price has risen, suggesting the rally has been driven partly by earnings expectation upgrades rather than multiple expansion alone. The 12-month forward EPS growth estimate ranks in the 78th percentile of the universe, and the dividend score hits the 83rd percentile — a combination that positions Gerdau as something of a value-plus-income story for EM-focused allocators. The analyst consensus is a hold with a mean target of BRL 24.50, implying roughly 13% upside from current levels, though that consensus data is around a month old.
On the ownership side, the most notable recent move belongs to BlackRock, which added over 127 million shares as last reported, and T. Rowe Price, which added 50 million. Both additions were disclosed as of mid-April, right as the stock was bottoming. Against that, the CEO Gustavo Werneck da Cunha sold 100,000 shares in early April at prices in the BRL 4 range — almost certainly a different share class (GGBR3 preferred) given the price level, so those trades should be read separately from the GGBR4 price history. The closely correlated peer GOAU4 — which shares the Gerdau corporate group — has moved in near lockstep, up 1.4% on the week. Broader steel peers diverged: VALE3 and CSNA3 were both weaker on the week, down 1.8% and 2.9% respectively, making Gerdau's outperformance specific rather than sector-wide.
The past two earnings releases produced negative reactions in both the day-one and five-day windows — the February print left the stock down roughly 2.4% on the day and 3.9% over the following week. Today's report is therefore a test of whether a 19% pre-earnings run has already priced in the recovery narrative, or whether the underlying Q1 numbers can sustain it.
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