Short sellers are retreating from CAR at speed. Short interest has fallen 36% in a single week to 17.3% of free float. That unwind is the dominant story — but the analyst community is moving in the opposite direction.
Pentwater Capital, a 10% owner, sold more than 468,000 shares on April 23 alone. The transactions totalled over $122 million. That single cluster of sales accounts for the bulk of the short interest decline recorded in the following days.
Short interest peaked above 9.5 million shares in late April. It has since fallen to roughly 6.1 million. The drop is sharp — among the steepest one-week moves in recent months for a stock at this float level.
The lending market reflects the retreat. Cost to borrow fell 58% over the week to 3.5%. Availability has loosened materially as returned borrows flow back into the pool. That said, the market remains tight: availability was near zero for 12 consecutive days through April 28, and even now the ORTEX short score sits at 70.6 — placing CAR in the 5th percentile globally for short pressure.
The exit by short sellers has not been matched by a change of view on Wall Street — quite the opposite.
JP Morgan's Ryan Brinkman cut his target to $140 from $165 on May 1, while maintaining an Underweight rating. That followed a downgrade the week before, when Brinkman had moved from Neutral to Underweight with a $165 target. Jefferies' Stephanie Moore downgraded from Buy to Hold the same day, though she raised her target to $160 from $112. Barclays had already moved to Underweight in late April.
The consensus mean price target now sits at $123 — nearly 34% below the May 1 close of $185.55.
Put/call ratio has dropped from a 52-week high of 2.85 on April 23 to 1.61 by May 1. The direction of travel — fewer puts relative to calls — mirrors the short unwind. The PCR remains well above its 52-week low of 0.88, and the z-score of -0.74 suggests sentiment is normalising from an extreme bearish position, not flipping bullish.
Earnings are next due May 20. The April 29 result produced a -0.73% one-day move — small relative to the volatility surrounding the short squeeze dynamics.
What to watch: Whether short interest stabilises above 15% of float now that the Pentwater overhang has cleared — or whether new short positions build ahead of the May 20 earnings print, where analyst consensus sits well below the current market price.
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