XHLD enters the back half of May with short sellers rebuilding positions at pace — even as the stock gives up further ground.
Short interest has more than doubled in a week. SI % of free float jumped from roughly 1.5% on May 8 to 3.6% by May 14 — a 132% week-on-week increase in shares short. The pattern is notable because it echoes a cluster of elevated short positioning seen in early April, when SI briefly touched 3.3% before unwinding through late April and early May. Having touched a low around 1.5%, shorts are back at cycle highs and building fast. Cost to borrow has eased materially from April's peak — CTB has dropped from above 75% in early April to roughly 29% now — suggesting borrowing conditions are looser than they were during the spring spike. That matters: lower borrow costs reduce the friction for new shorts, making the current rebuild cheaper to sustain. Availability, by contrast, has moved in the opposite direction this week. The lending pool tightened notably — utilization climbed from 18% on May 8 to 44% on May 14 — though it remains well below the 52-week peak of 100%, meaning the borrow market is tightening but not yet under genuine stress.
The price action and short rebuild are moving in lockstep — and not in bulls' favour. XHLD closed at $1.34 on May 15, down 10.7% on the day and 2.9% on the week. The stock is now off 8.2% over the past month and trading near the lower end of a range it has occupied since late February. Earnings history provides a consistent backdrop: the last four reported events all produced negative one-day reactions, averaging around a 9% decline. The most severe was a -11.9% one-day move in November 2025, followed by a further 9.6% loss over the following week. There is no confirmed next earnings date in the data.
The ownership picture is concentrated and largely static. V-cube, Inc. — a Japanese tech firm — holds 38% of shares, a position that has not changed since October 2025. Geode Capital Management and UBS Asset Management each added small positions in recent filings. Beyond that, institutional coverage is thin, with only six reported holders in total. Insider activity in the data is stale, with the most recent trades dating to March 2025 — a handful of small director purchases at prices between $0.49 and $1.27, totalling just over $12,000 net. Nothing in the ownership or insider data provides a clear counter-narrative to the short-side positioning.
ORTEX's short score for XHLD rose to 60.9 on May 14, up from 45.2 a week earlier — a sharp move higher that tracks the short interest rebuild in real time. The short score rank sits at the 12th percentile of the sector, meaning most advertising-sector names carry less short-side pressure on this measure. The ORTEX combined score mirrors that reading at 60.9. No analyst data is available in the snapshot, and the only available valuation figure is an enterprise value of approximately $8.7 million — consistent with a micro-cap name where traditional sell-side coverage is sparse.
The setup heading into next week is one where the pace of short rebuilding — not the absolute level — is the variable worth tracking. SI doubled in a single week while the stock fell; whether that trend continues or whether short sellers take profits will depend on whether the stock holds above recent support.
See the live data behind this article on ORTEX.
Open XHLD 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.
