Coupang heads into its May 5 Q1 print with options traders meaningfully more bullish than at any point in recent months — an unusual tilt heading into a major earnings event.
The options signal is the clearest standout. The put/call ratio has dropped to 0.44, about 1.5 standard deviations below its 20-day average of 0.52. That is the most call-heavy reading since the past year's low of 0.32, with the ratio having steadily unwound from the more cautious 0.57–0.63 range seen through March. Investors are paying more for upside exposure than at almost any point in the last twelve months. The stock has backed this up with a 9% gain over the past month to $20.59, though it remains down 15% year-to-date.
Short interest tells a far less charged story. Bears have been pulling back materially — SI dropped nearly 25% over the past week to just 2.2% of the free float, unwinding a mid-April spike that briefly pushed positions above 3.3%. Borrow costs have ticked up to 0.57% (up roughly 24% week-on-week), but in absolute terms that figure is negligible. Availability remains wide and borrow is easy to obtain. The ORTEX short score has eased from around 35 to 32 over the past two weeks, consistent with the de-risking in bearish positioning.
The Greenoaks cluster of insider buying from mid-March is the other notable feature of the setup. The board-affiliated investment company purchased roughly $136M worth of shares across three days at prices between $18.40 and $18.68 — meaningfully below where the stock trades today. That accumulation now represents a net insider buy of over 7.3 million shares in the 90 days through mid-March. Institutional holders are broadly stable, with Baillie Gifford, Dodge & Cox, and Capital Research all adding shares in the most recent reporting periods.
The analyst community has regrouped around a more constructive stance after a bruising few months. Barclays raised its target sharply to $30 on April 23 — just days before the print — and maintained Overweight. That move partially offset earlier target compression: the same firm had cut from $40 to $23 in February, and Mizuho trimmed its target to $25 after the last earnings release. The mean analyst target now sits at $27.74, implying roughly 35% upside from current levels against a trailing P/E near 65x and an EV/EBITDA of around 21x. Bulls point to robust revenue growth (estimated revenues approach $38 billion on consensus) and an unusually strong 90-day forward EPS momentum rank (97th percentile). Bears note that EPS surprise history ranks near the bottom of the universe at the 9th percentile, and that near-term momentum beyond 30 days is weak.
The Q1 print will test whether the confidence embedded in options positioning — and Barclays' conviction-heavy target raise — is matched by a cost structure and margin trajectory that justifies re-rating the stock toward the analyst consensus after months of painful valuation compression.
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