Coeur Mining heads into its Q1 2026 results tomorrow with short interest climbing fast from a recent floor — while the stock has quietly shed 37% from its February peak.
The most striking feature of this week's setup is the speed of the short rebuild. Short interest fell sharply through April, collapsing from roughly 6% to just 3.1% of the free float between early April and late April. That looks like covering, likely into gold-price strength and pre-earnings caution. But from April 28 onward, shorts have reversed course hard. Short interest has jumped nearly 28% week-on-week to 41.4 million shares, now back to 4.0% of float. The move is noteworthy because it comes as the stock itself is falling — down 4% on the week and 10% over the past month to $17.13. Shorts are rebuilding into weakness, not fighting a rally. The borrow market gives them little friction: cost to borrow is a negligible 0.40% annually, and availability is loose enough that there is no squeeze pressure worth mentioning. The ORTEX short score has drifted higher — now at 36, up from 32.4 a week ago — but remains far from extremes.
Options traders tell a more muted story. The put/call ratio runs at 0.30, roughly in line with its 20-day average of 0.29. The z-score of 1.5 is modestly elevated but not alarming. Call positioning still dominates, and the PCR is a long way from its 52-week high of 0.55, meaning the options market has not priced in meaningful downside protection ahead of earnings. That divergence — shorts rebuilding aggressively while options traders remain relatively sanguine — is the key tension going into tomorrow's print.
The Street is broadly constructive. Eight of nine covering analysts carry Buy or Outperform ratings, with a mean target near $28 against a current price of $17.13 — implying more than 60% upside to consensus. Canaccord Genuity upgraded CDE to Buy last week, restoring a rating it had cut in February after post-earnings disappointment. That upgrade was coincident with the stock lingering well below the $26 target maintained throughout — a sign the analyst sees a floor rather than momentum. Valuation multiples have compressed alongside the stock: EV/EBITDA has contracted by roughly 0.16x over the past month to 2.6x, and the P/E trades at 7.5x. At those levels the stock screens as inexpensive in absolute terms. The bull case rests on balance sheet improvement and Rochester expansion optionality; the bear case centres on valuation sustainability at current gold price assumptions.
On the institutional side, the flows are worth a glance. BlackRock added 8.4 million shares, bringing its stake to 6.8% of shares outstanding — the largest position on the register. Fidelity (FMR) made an even more aggressive move, nearly doubling its stake with a 15.3 million share addition to 1.6% of shares. Van Eck added 14 million shares, lifting its position to 5.9%. These are large moves from credible names, filing predominantly as of late March and April. Insiders, by contrast, were heavy sellers in late February — CEO Mitchell Krebs sold over $2.5 million of stock at prices around $26.50-$27.15, alongside coordinated selling from the CFO, COO and General Counsel on the same day. At the time, those sales looked like routine equity plan distributions near a price high; with the stock now at $17.13, they carry a different weight in hindsight.
Peers have also sold off sharply on the week. HL dropped 4.4% and AEM fell nearly 6%, suggesting sector-wide pressure rather than a CDE-specific story. EDR on the TSX lost more than 7.5%.
Tomorrow's Q1 earnings are the natural event to watch. The last full earnings print in February produced a 9% single-day gain and a 17.6% five-day rally — a sharp re-rating that has since fully reversed. Whether the current setup of rebuilding shorts, loose borrow and a still-constructive options market resolves in the same direction will depend on the operational numbers and any guidance on Rochester.
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