Ecopetrol approaches its May 5 results release with one of the more striking positioning shifts in the Colombian oil patch: short sellers have unwound nearly 40% of their positions over the past month, even as the stock itself slipped 7% over the same period.
The short-side retreat is the clearest story heading into the print. Shares short fell from roughly 13.9 million in early April to around 8.4 million by April 30 — a 40% drawdown in borrowed positions over 30 days. That happened in two distinct waves: a large step-down around April 22-24, then a stabilisation. Borrowing costs confirm the move, falling from above 2.4% in late March to just 0.84% now — back to near-term lows. Borrow availability has loosened significantly alongside the exodus, removing any squeeze dynamic that existed earlier in the quarter. With the ORTEX short score at 48.4, well off its 52-week highs, this is not a heavily contested stock heading into earnings.
Options traders are not filling the gap left by retreating shorts. The put/call ratio of 0.17 is actually fractionally below its 20-day average and sits close to the lower end of its 52-week range — a far cry from the 0.90 reading registered at the yearly peak. Call-side positioning dominates, suggesting the options market is not pricing in meaningful downside protection ahead of the release. That divergence — shorts covering while calls remain dominant — points to a market leaning constructively rather than defensively.
The analyst picture complicates the bullish read. The mean price target of $11.97 sits roughly 14% below the current price of $13.92, implying the consensus view has not caught up with the stock's year-to-date rally of 37.5%. The most recent major-firm moves on record — JP Morgan upgrading to Neutral with a $9.50 target in February 2025, and Goldman Sachs cutting to $9.50 in September 2024 — are now stale enough that they likely reflect a fundamentally different oil-price environment. Taking them at face value would suggest the Street as a whole remains meaningfully behind the curve on valuation. The EV/EBITDA multiple has compressed nearly 3 points over 30 days, now at 43.7x, while the P/E of 8.3x and price-to-book of 1.16x both reflect the low-valuation profile typical of a state-controlled LatAm oil major. Colombia holds 88.5% of shares, which concentrates price sensitivity squarely on commodity and political factors rather than institutional flows.
The May 5 report will test whether the operational results justify a stock that has moved sharply ahead of where analysts left their targets — and whether the short-covering of the past month was based on fundamentals or simply noise around broader EM risk sentiment.
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