CAR heads into Tuesday's Q1 print with every available share to borrow already lent out and options traders piling on protection at an unusually high rate — a combination that makes the short-side setup as charged as it has been all year.
The borrow market tells the most unambiguous story. Utilization has been pinned at 100% since April 14 — the highest reading in the past year, and sustained there for two consecutive weeks. Every share that can be borrowed is already being shorted. Short interest runs at 21.4% of the free float, down sharply from a mid-April peak after a 20% single-session drop on April 24, but still a heavy structural position. Cost to borrow has climbed roughly 43% over the past month to 5.5%, reflecting tightening availability even as some shorts were covered last week. The ORTEX short score sits at 73 — elevated, and drifting lower only gradually despite the recent covering.
Options traders are no less cautious. The put/call ratio has stayed above 2.0 for most of the past two weeks, reaching as high as 2.85 on April 23. At 2.28 going into the print, it remains well above its 20-day average of 1.85. That's close to the highest defensive reading of the past year, suggesting demand for downside protection has not eased even as the stock itself staged a 26% rebound over the past month. That recovery came against a brutal backdrop: CAR fell nearly 69% in a single week at some point recently, and the stock closed Monday at $187.07 — down 8.3% on the day.
The analyst community has turned decisively more cautious in the run-up. JP Morgan's Ryan Brinkman downgraded to Underweight on April 23 while simultaneously raising his target to $165 — a move that captures the market's awkward position: the stock has rallied hard, but the fundamentals story has not improved enough to justify it. Barclays made the same call days earlier, cutting to Underweight with a $150 target. Both firms had previously held neutral-leaning ratings. The consensus rests at Hold, with the mean price target near $120 — meaningfully below current trading levels, flagging that the Street sees the recent recovery as overdone rather than earned. Morgan Stanley, which downgraded to Equal-Weight in late 2025 and trimmed its target to $97 in March, sits even lower.
The ownership picture adds texture. SRS Investment Management holds nearly 50% of shares outstanding — an extraordinary concentration for a public company — and reported no change as of year-end 2025. Pentwater Capital, the second-largest holder, added almost 4 million shares in Q1 2026, bringing its stake to nearly 20%. The earnings reaction history adds further context: the two most recent prints each produced single-day drops of roughly 21%, followed by further five-day losses. Tuesday's release will test whether a stock that has already priced in considerable pessimism can find a floor — or whether the combination of maxed-out utilization, elevated put demand, and a Street consensus far below current prices reflects a more durable view on the rental car operator's earnings trajectory.
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