ONE Gas enters its May 21 earnings release carrying its most aggressive short position in months, against a stock that has given back meaningful ground since late March.
Short sellers have added conviction quickly. Short interest climbed 29% over the past month to 5.3% of the free float — a level that makes bearish positioning the dominant story into this print. The move has accelerated in the final stretch, with shares short rising another 2% in the last session alone. Despite that build, borrow conditions remain accessible: cost to borrow is a negligible 0.39%, and availability is vast at nearly 1,900% of short interest, meaning the lending pool is far from constrained. Bears have room to add without squeezing each other.
Options traders are not reinforcing that bearish signal. The put/call ratio is running at 0.21, barely above its 20-day average and well below the year's high of 1.36. That reads as call-dominant positioning — investors using options to express upside rather than hedge downside. The divergence is notable: shorts are building while options sentiment points the other way.
The analyst community reflects the same split. Truist, which initiated coverage with a Buy and a $99 target on April 21, trimmed that target to $95 this week while keeping its positive rating. Wells Fargo's initiation last week landed at Underweight with an $85 target — effectively flagging the stock as slightly overvalued at current prices near $82. Morgan Stanley nudged its target to $86 from $84 last month while staying at Equal-Weight. The bull case centres on weather-driven demand, regulatory execution, and a forward yield that ranks in the 96th percentile on ORTEX's dividend score. Bears flag geographic concentration — Oklahoma, Kansas, and Texas dominate revenues — and a PE that has de-rated roughly 10% over 30 days to 16.7x.
The past earnings pattern reinforces the cautious read. The last two prints both produced negative first-day reactions: roughly -3.2% and -2.5% respectively, with five-day moves of -4.5% and -4.4%. Only February's Q4 report generated a positive response, gaining 1.8% on day one. The May 21 print will test whether the month-long short build reflects a well-founded concern about the quarter — or whether a beat on volume or weather-driven margins forces a rapid unwind of a position that, while growing, remains easy to exit.
See the live data behind this article on ORTEX.
Open OGS 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.
