RACE fell 4.1% on the week to close at €279.55, even as the company delivered a strong first-quarter report and reaffirmed its full-year outlook — a gap between fundamentals and price that frames the most interesting tension heading into May.
The Q1 print was hard to fault. Revenue came in just under €1.85 billion, up from €1.76 billion a year earlier. EBITDA cleared €720 million and industrial free cash flow topped €650 billion, both tracking the 2026 guidance trajectory. CEO Benedetto Vigna flagged that the order book extended further toward end-2027, deliveries in the Middle East held flat year-on-year despite active conflict in the region, and the company said it has seen no unusual order cancellations. Ferrari also updated full-year earnings guidance, and the company's highly anticipated electric model — the Ferrari Luce — is set to premiere on May 25. None of that was enough to keep the stock out of the red.
The positioning picture helps explain the disconnect. Short interest has been building steadily since late March, climbing from roughly 1.04% of the free float to 1.75% — a near-doubling in six weeks. That pace is worth watching even if the absolute level remains modest. Borrow costs have risen around 48% over the past month to 0.94%, well off the brief spike to 7.6% on April 21 but tracking consistently higher than the sub-0.65% levels seen in early April. Availability in the lending pool has tightened meaningfully: the lending utilisation ratio rose to a 52-week high of 20.1% on April 28 before easing to 13.1% — a clear reminder that demand for borrows has increased materially this spring. The ORTEX short score of 34.8 has eased from 37.6 at the end of April, consistent with the modest softening of utilisation after earnings, but the directional trend since late March has been unambiguously toward more bearish positioning.
The Street, by contrast, remains firmly constructive. The consensus rating is a buy, with the mean price target near €370 — implying roughly 32% upside from current levels. One piece of context worth flagging: ORTEX data shows no recent analyst rating changes in the window around this week's report, so there has been no fresh bellwether move to anchor the conversation. Bulls lean on Ferrari's pricing power, its unmatched order-book visibility through 2027, and the Luce launch as a fresh catalyst. The bear case, implicit in the short-building, likely centres on valuation: the stock trades near 28x trailing earnings and roughly 11x book, multiples that have compressed a little over the past 30 days as the price has drifted. EV/EBITDA has moved from around 17.5 to 16.7 over the same period — still not cheap, but directionally looser.
On the insider side, activity on April 16 was a routine compensation event: multiple C-suite executives received share awards and simultaneously sold a portion of vested stock at €304. The CEO and other senior figures did not make discretionary purchases. The net 90-day insider position is actually positive at around 17,200 shares, largely reflecting the award grants rather than open-market buying. There is no meaningful insider signal either way.
Peer comparison offers some context. P911 — Porsche AG, Ferrari's closest listed correlate — gained 1.2% on the week and rose 2.3% on Tuesday. VOW3 and RNO were also lower on the week, down 3.2% and 3.9% respectively, suggesting broader European auto sector pressure absorbed some of RACE's decline. F dropped 6.4% over the same period. Ferrari's relative underperformance on the back of a solid earnings print, set against a sector that was already soft, is what makes the week unusual.
What to watch next: the Ferrari Luce world premiere on May 25 in Rome will be the next major test of demand signalling, and any shift in the order-book commentary around that event — positive or otherwise — is the most direct read on whether the gap between the short-builders and the €370 consensus has any near-term catalyst to resolve.
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