LQR House Inc. heads into its May 14 earnings release with short sellers clearly in retreat — a notable turn for a micro-cap advertising stock that has been heavily borrowed across much of the past two months.
The most telling move this week is in short interest itself. Estimated short interest fell 24% over the week to 1.5% of the free float, down from a local peak near 1.8% in late April. The retreat is meaningful in pace rather than absolute level — at just over 210,000 shares short, the overall position is modest for a $19 million market-cap name. Borrow availability reflects that ease: ORTEX data puts availability at roughly 310% of outstanding short interest, meaning there are more than three shares available to lend for every one currently borrowed. That is a loose lending market by any measure.
Cost to borrow tells a different story, though. At 6.2% annualised, it is actually up nearly 20% over the week — but the more important context is the direction it has come from. CTB ran above 17% as recently as early April, touching its highest level of the trailing 30-day window around March 31. The sharp compression since then — down more than 60% over the month — confirms that the frenzy of short-side demand that characterised late March and early April has substantially cooled. Shorts are cheaper to carry now, but the lingering uplift relative to a standard general-collateral rate reflects that the stock remains a differentiated borrow.
The ORTEX short score adds nuance to the picture. It has eased from 49.2 on April 24 to 43.7 on May 5 — still in the moderate range, but the direction of travel is clearly lower. That decline tracks closely with the unwinding of short interest through the back half of April, as does a steady loosening of availability over the same period. Where utilisation of the lending pool peaked above 43% in late March, it has settled near 29% — well below the 52-week high of 99.4%, suggesting the stock is nowhere near the squeeze-pressure zone it reached at its most extreme.
Price action has been choppy. YHC gained 11.8% over the past week to close at $0.90 on May 5, recouping some of the 10.6% it shed in the prior month. The week's bounce coincides directly with the short-interest decline, making the directional link hard to ignore — though the stock remains a sub-dollar name with a $19 million market cap and all the liquidity constraints that implies. Among the loosely correlated peer set, PERI on Nasdaq added 4.1% over the week, while TVA.B on the TSX dropped sharply, down 24% — underscoring how idiosyncratic the moves across this peer group are.
What to watch next is the May 14 earnings event. Prior reactions have been mixed in magnitude: the most recent print in early March sent the stock down 6.8% on the day before recovering some ground, while the November 2025 release produced a shallower 2.8% one-day decline. With short interest already compressed and availability loose, there is limited structural pressure on either side heading into the number — but the stock's history of volatile post-earnings swings on thin volume means the setup rewards close attention to both the print and any change in borrow demand in the days immediately following.
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