Surf Air Mobility heads into its May 13 earnings print with an unusual split: insiders buying at $1.36 while the short-selling community holds its largest position in months.
The insider activity is the clearest signal heading into the release. On April 21, five insiders — including the Chairman, the Founder, the CEO, and the CFO — all purchased shares at $1.36 in a coordinated cluster. Net insider buying over the past 90 days totals roughly $499,000, a meaningful commitment for a company trading at just $1.35 per share. The CEO and CFO then received stock awards on May 7 and promptly sold small amounts the following day — a pattern consistent with tax withholding rather than conviction selling, given the awards were granted at zero cost. The cluster buy on April 21 is the more telling signal.
Short sellers are reading the situation very differently. Short interest has climbed to 21.3% of the free float, up more than 21% over the past month, and availability in the lending market has tightened to just 2% — meaning almost every share available to borrow is already lent out, with nearly no slack left for new short positions to be opened. Cost to borrow has more than doubled over the past week to 8.8%, compared to the roughly 3–4% level that prevailed through most of April. The ORTEX short score sits at 74, ranking in the bottom 3rd percentile of all stocks. Borrow conditions are as tight as they have been this year, with the lending market close to fully utilised at 98.2%.
The analyst picture adds a further wrinkle. Northland Capital Markets initiated coverage with an Outperform rating and a $5.00 target on May 7 — the only recent action. The consensus across three analysts sits at $5.50, more than four times the current price of $1.35. Canaccord Genuity, which has held a cautious Hold rating, last cut its target to $2.25 in March after the stock's sharp post-earnings decline. Bulls point to the Regional Air Mobility growth story, the Palantir stake, and a $27 million equity raise; bears focus on delays in electrification commercialisation, eVTOL competition, and the company's ongoing cash burn. The most recent two earnings events saw the stock fall 26% and 5% on the day, respectively, with five-day losses of 30% and 10%.
The print is therefore a test of whether the insider conviction holds against a market that has spent the past month building an increasingly aggressive short position into a near-locked lending market.
See the live data behind this article on ORTEX.
Open SRFM on ORTEX →ORTEX Market Intelligence content is generated by AI from a snapshot of ORTEX's proprietary data. Content is informational only and does not constitute investment advice.
