KYIV heads into its May 12 earnings report riding a 30% surge — with shorts retreating and options traders firmly leaning long.
The most striking pre-earnings signal is the unwinding of bearish positioning. Short interest has fallen 31% over the past month to around 1.21 million shares — a sustained, multi-week retreat that began in early April when positions were running near 1.76 million. That exit has accompanied a price move that tells the same story: KYIV closed Friday at $13.29, up 8% on the week and nearly 30% over the past month. Borrowing costs have eased with the short interest, pulling back over 40% from their April peak to 5.7% APR. The lending pool remains loose — availability is more than 400% of current short interest — meaning there is no friction stopping new short positions from being built if sentiment turns, but the market is clearly not rushing to do so.
Options positioning reinforces the bullish lean. The put/call ratio is running at 0.08, only fractionally above its 20-day average of 0.075, and a world away from any defensive posture. The 52-week high for the PCR is close to 2.0 — the current reading is near the floor of the past year, suggesting call buyers have dominated options flow as the stock has rallied. That said, the absolute PCR level has ticked up slightly in the last few sessions, a modest shift worth watching into the print.
The valuation story provides context for why bulls are positioned this way. At an EV/EBITDA of roughly 3.3 to 4.2 (estimates), KYIV trades at a deep discount to most comparable telecom or digital infrastructure businesses — a function partly of Ukraine-related risk, partly of thin sell-side coverage. The one recent analyst action on record is Barclays initiating with an Overweight rating and a $12.50 target in early April, which the stock has already traded through. Parent company VEON controls 83.5% of shares, keeping the freely traded float tight and amplifying price moves in either direction.
The May 12 print will test whether the revenue and cash-flow trajectory — estimated EBITDA near $693 million against an enterprise value around $2.3 billion — is durable enough to justify the re-rating investors have already delivered in advance.
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