Faraday Future Intelligent Electric heads into its May 15 earnings report as one of the most heavily shorted small-cap names in the US auto sector — with the borrow market nearly exhausted and short sellers showing no sign of retreating.
The lending picture tells the most striking story heading into the print. Availability has tightened to near-zero levels, with the borrow pool running at 95.9% capacity — just fractionally off its 52-week maximum of fully drawn. That means only about one share in 25 remains available to borrow for new shorts. Cost to borrow has held steady in the 13–14% range for weeks, with no meaningful dip. Short interest itself is running at 30.4% of the free float — elevated by any standard — though it has pulled back roughly 14% over the past week as some positions closed, retreating from a peak near 63 million shares in late April. That recent reduction is worth watching: it came alongside the stock's 13% rise over the past month, suggesting some covering rather than a change in conviction.
Price action has been choppy but modestly constructive. FFAI gained 3.6% over the week entering the earnings date, though it slipped 5.3% on May 14 alone, closing at $0.39. Year-to-date, the stock is down roughly 60%. Options positioning leans heavily toward calls — the put/call ratio is running at just 0.10, near its 52-week low of 0.095, and well below the 52-week high of 0.72. That means the options market is not hedging defensively; call activity dominates almost entirely. The ORTEX short score is 73.4 out of 100, ranking in the 4th percentile of the universe — an extreme reading that flags the depth of bearish positioning via the lending market, even as short volumes have edged off recent highs.
The only analyst coverage on record is a Buy initiation from Litchfield Hills in November 2025, carrying a $5.00 price target. Given that the stock now trades near $0.39, that figure is almost certainly stale and should not be read as current Street consensus. Institutional activity tells a more nuanced story: BlackRock added 2.7 million shares as recently as April 30, and Vanguard added 1.9 million shares in Q1 — passive index flows rather than active conviction, but notable given the size relative to total float. Millennium Management, by contrast, trimmed its position by 2.4 million shares through year-end 2025. Insider activity in the 90-day window consists entirely of zero-value director share awards, with no open-market buying recorded.
The print will test whether Faraday Future can offer any operational progress — on production, cash runway, or the long-delayed FF 91 delivery schedule — that justifies the re-rating implied by recent short covering, or whether the 30%-of-float short base is positioned correctly for further deterioration.
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