CMP heads into today's Q2 2026 earnings with a striking reversal story: shorts have been covering aggressively, the stock has rallied hard, and options traders are leaning heavily bullish.
The most telling signal in the positioning data is the collapse in short interest. CMP carried roughly 2.4 million shares short in late March. By May 5, that had fallen to just 1.66 million — a drop of nearly 31% in a month. Short interest now runs at about 4% of free float, well below where it was six weeks ago. The borrow market tells the same story: availability has loosened markedly as the short base retreated, cost to borrow is a negligible 0.52%, and the ORTEX short score has eased from 42 in late April to 37.6 — moving away from elevated territory. This is not a heavily contested stock heading into the print.
Options positioning reinforces the bullish tilt. The put/call ratio is running at just 0.12, well below its 20-day average of 0.23 and close to its 52-week low of 0.08. That means call activity is dominating options flow by a wide margin — traders are positioning for further upside, not protection against a miss. The stock has already responded: CMP is up 4% on the week and 16% over the past month, closing at $26.46. Year-to-date the gain is nearly 30%.
The bull-bear debate centres on a narrow set of fundamentals. Bulls point to rising EBITDA estimates — consensus pencils in roughly $217–224 million for fiscal 2026 — and the company's entrenched position in rock salt and sulfate of potash (SOP), two markets with limited direct competition. EPS momentum ranks in the 84th percentile on surprise history, suggesting the company has a track record of beating lowered expectations. Bears counter that leverage remains stubbornly high at roughly 5x, SOP volume recovery has been slow, and cost control is still a work in progress. Analyst consensus, last updated in early March, shows a mean price target near $25.75 — actually a touch below the current price of $26.46. That leaves the analyst community essentially neutral on further near-term upside from here, a constraint worth noting even as the short base continues to shrink. JPMorgan moved to Underweight back in August 2025, and while BMO has lifted its target in stages — most recently to $25 in January 2026 — neither firm is pounding the table.
The earnings report will test whether the operational recovery in SOP volumes is translating into hard numbers, and whether the leverage trajectory is improving fast enough to change the minds of the sceptics who remain on the sidelines.
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