CDE reports Q1 results on May 6, arriving with short sellers firmly on the back foot after a dramatic repositioning over the past six weeks.
The short interest story is the standout heading into this print. SI has collapsed from over 8% of the free float in late March to 3.3% today — a near-60% decline in short shares over the past month. That is not a gradual drift; it is a rapid covering event. The pace has slowed in recent days, with SI ticking up 4.9% on April 30 to bring the float percentage back to around 3.3%, but the broader trend is unambiguously toward less bearish conviction. Borrow conditions confirm the picture: cost to borrow is a negligible 0.47%, and lending availability is extremely loose, meaning new shorts face no structural barrier to entry. The squeeze pressure that may have driven some of the covering is not the story here — bears are simply leaving.
Options positioning offers little drama. The put/call ratio of 0.29 is barely above its 20-day average and sits near the low end of its 52-week range, which stretches up to 0.55. Calls dominate the options market decisively, consistent with a stock that has drawn predominantly bullish speculative interest. CDE has shed 9% on the week and 6% over the past month to close at $17.65, underperforming close peers — PAAS fell 8% on the week, dropped 12%, and lost 4% — so the sector is broadly under pressure, but CDE's retreat has been more measured than the worst offenders.
The analyst community has tilted constructive in the lead-up. Canaccord Genuity upgraded CDE to Buy on April 29 — the same day as the last earnings event — reversing the downgrade it issued back in February. The consensus stands at nine buy/outperform ratings against one hold, with a mean price target of $28.15. That implies roughly 60% upside to the current price, which appears rich relative to where the stock is trading; readers should treat the headline figure as reflecting a range of targets rather than a precise street consensus. CIBC initiated at Outperformer in March with a $40 target, which further skews the mean upward. Valuation multiples look undemanding: EV/EBITDA is running at roughly 2.7x and the PE near 7.8x, with the price/book around 0.5x — ratios that suggest the market is pricing in execution risk rather than a premium for recovery.
The institutional picture adds context. BlackRock added 8.4 million shares in Q1, Van Eck added 14 million, and Fidelity more than doubled its position by 15.3 million shares — significant accumulation from three separate large institutions in the same quarter. Against that, the insider tape from late February shows the CEO, CFO, COO, and general counsel all selling at prices around $26-$27, well above current levels. Those transactions represent normal post-vesting activity at elevated prices, but the fact that the stock has since fallen nearly 35% from those sale levels sets the table for how much the May 6 print will need to deliver.
The Q1 release is therefore a test of whether the operational improvements that drove the late-2025 re-rating — the Rochester ramp, the balance sheet deleveraging — are holding at current gold and silver prices, and whether the company can justify a return to the mid-$20s that analysts and large institutions have been betting on.
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