FIG reports its first-quarter 2026 results tomorrow evening with short sellers running at their most aggressive level since the company went public — and a lending market tightening around them.
Short interest has nearly doubled over six weeks. From roughly 13.5% of free float in late March, it climbed to a peak above 25% in late April before edging back to 23.6% on May 1. That six-week surge — a 68% jump in shares shorted — ranks among the most rapid buildups in the stock's short history. The ORTEX short score confirms the extreme: FIG scores 70.8 out of 100, placing it in the 5th percentile of the universe on short-score rank (i.e., more heavily shorted than 95% of peers). Borrow conditions still allow the trade to run — cost to borrow is modest at 0.84% — but the borrow pool has tightened materially, with availability spending two full days at maximum compression in late April before easing to roughly 83%.
Options positioning, by contrast, offers no particular signal of alarm. The put/call ratio is 0.60, essentially in line with its 20-day average of 0.58, with a z-score close to zero. Call volume is still running ahead of puts. That divergence between aggressive short positioning and relaxed options sentiment is the central tension heading into the print: short sellers have piled in, yet derivatives traders have not followed with protective hedges.
The fundamental debate centres on how much Figma's AI investment costs the growth story. Bulls point to the revenue beat last quarter, strong growth in weekly active users, and early traction for Figma Make. The stock rallied 12% the day it last reported and extended that to 35% over the following five trading days — a reaction that underscores how badly the market wants to believe the growth narrative. Bears flag the deteriorating gross margin as AI-related costs accumulate, arguing that Figma's full-platform strategy could prove expensive without a matching improvement in profitability. The Street's consensus is a cautious Hold, with nine analysts carrying that rating. After the February print, targets came down sharply across multiple firms — RBC trimmed from $38 to $31, Stifel from $40 to $30, Wells Fargo from $52 to $42. The stock at $19.96 now trades well below every published target, giving the analyst community an implied return potential above 100% — though targets set in February look increasingly stale against a stock that has fallen another 25% since. BTIG initiated at Neutral in mid-April without a price target, the most recent Street opinion.
Ownership is dominated by insiders and early venture capital. CEO Dylan Field holds 12.6% of shares and added roughly 1.9 million shares as recently as March. On the other side, the CTO sold over $5 million worth of stock in early March, and a cluster of executives including the CFO, General Counsel, and CTO all filed small sales on April 1. The net 90-day insider balance remains positive at roughly $136 million in net purchases, though that figure is skewed by Field's purchases. The peer group offered a mixed week: ASAN gained 15.7% on the week, broadly matching FIG's 15.3% bounce, while FIVN surged 41% on its own earnings, and CRM moved only 3%.
The earnings report will therefore test whether the wave of new short interest reflects a credible view on AI-driven margin erosion, or whether the reversal of FIG's one-month decline — the stock dropped 6% in April before bouncing hard this week — has already caught some of that positioning offside.
See the live data behind this article on ORTEX.
Open FIG on ORTEX →ORTEX Market Intelligence content is generated by AI from a snapshot of ORTEX's proprietary data. Content is informational only and does not constitute investment advice.
