POET Technologies pulled back 8% on Tuesday to $13.07, giving up ground after a week that saw short sellers begin to unwind — but the lending market remains far too tight for bears to declare victory.
Short interest has actually fallen from its recent peak. It dropped roughly 10% in a single session to 13.7% of the free float, after touching nearly 15.3% earlier in the week. The one-week picture is more nuanced: shorts are still up 24% over the past five sessions compared to the prior week's level, reflecting the broader accumulation phase that ran through mid-May. The absolute figure of around 18 million shares short represents a meaningful pullback from the 20.8 million peak on May 15, and that partial unwind coincides almost exactly with Tuesday's price drop — a pattern worth noting.
The borrow market, however, has not meaningfully loosened. Availability has tightened to 14.3% — meaning for roughly every six shares already borrowed, fewer than one remains available in the lending pool. That is only marginally better than the 13.3% reported in the earlier convergence note this week, and still represents a severely constrained lending environment. Cost to borrow has eased from the mid-May high near 5.3% back to 4.3%, but that remains nearly five times the sub-1% rates that prevailed through most of April. The 52-week low for availability hit 2.4%, so there is still room for the pool to tighten further. The ORTEX short score sits at 65.8 — down fractionally from 66.9 at the peak but still ranking in the 4th percentile of the universe, where very few names carry a more intense aggregate short signal.
Options traders have pulled back slightly from maximum defensiveness. The put/call ratio is running at 0.36, above its 20-day average of 0.25 but below the annual high of 0.43 hit on May 15. At roughly 1.4 standard deviations above the recent mean, hedging demand is elevated — just no longer at its extreme. The combination of a partial short unwind and a PCR that has eased from the peak suggests the most acute moment of bearish pressure may have passed, but positioning remains cautious rather than neutral.
The Street has been quiet on POET — the most recent analyst actions date from late 2024, with both Northland Capital Markets and Craig-Hallum carrying Outperform and Buy ratings respectively at targets of $7.00 and $5.50. Those figures sit well below the current $13.07 price, and given the staleness of the data, they should be treated as historical reference points rather than live guidance. The EPS surprise factor score of 89 — near the top of the universe — signals the company has consistently beaten expectations, which may partly explain why the stock has outrun those targets so dramatically. Quality and value metrics remain deeply negative, with the F-Score at 2 and return on assets running sharply negative.
Among correlated peers, Tuesday's session was mixed. MX and IPWR both advanced on the day, up 5.9% and 4.5% respectively, and each gained more than 9–10% on the week — diverging sharply from POET's 8% single-day drop. RMBS fell 1.4% on the day and 6.3% on the week, tracking more closely to POET's recent weakness. ARM added 3.7% Tuesday, suggesting the broader semiconductor tape was not the culprit for POET's specific selloff.
The next confirmed earnings event is scheduled for August 12, and given the stock's history of outsized single-day moves — gains of 20%, 11%, and 10% on the past three results days — that date will concentrate attention as shorts and longs alike recalibrate around whether the borrow pool tightens further or begins to rebuild meaningfully between now and then.
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