CADLR dropped 8% on Wednesday after Q1 earnings landed well below the bottom line consensus — an EPS miss of -$0.09 against a $0.65 estimate — even as revenue more than doubled year-on-year to $146m, driven by fleet expansion and the company's first completed monopile installation at Ørsted's Hornsea 3 project. The headline numbers capture the tension: strong operational momentum on paper, but the market focusing squarely on the earnings gap.
The most striking shift in positioning over recent weeks has been a sustained and rapid unwinding of short interest. SI % of the free float has collapsed from 3.1% in early April to just under 1% — roughly a two-thirds reduction in six weeks. That cover has continued into this week, with the reading ticking down from 1.04% to 0.99% in the last two sessions alone. The borrowing cost tells a different story: cost to borrow jumped 129% over the past week to 2.45%, its highest level in the 30-day window — likely a short-term spike driven by demand ahead of today's earnings print rather than a structural squeeze. Availability remains extremely loose at 549%, meaning there is roughly five and a half times as many shares available to borrow as are currently shorted. New short positions can be established easily, and at a notably higher price than last week. The ORTEX short score has also been easing steadily, sliding from 40.8 on May 7 to 36.7 today — a directional move consistent with diminishing short-side conviction.
The valuation picture is inexpensive on reported earnings. The PE ratio is 6.7x and EV/EBITDA is 6.3x, with the latter compressing 0.5 turns over the past month as the stock edged higher before today's reversal. The price-to-book sits at 1.1x, close to flat over the period. Factor scores offer a mixed read: dividend quality scores well at 74th percentile, while forward earnings momentum is notably weak — EPS momentum registers in the 20th percentile on a 30-day basis and the 10th on a 90-day basis. The EPS surprise score, at the 11th percentile, reflects a market that has been regularly confronted with misses. Analyst target data in the snapshot shows a mean near NOK 6.3 — a figure that appears inconsistent with the current price of NOK 62.3 and is most likely a currency or data conversion artefact; that data point should be treated with caution.
The ownership story has a clear strategic dimension. BW Group (via BW Wind Services), the controlling affiliated company, has been actively adding. In March alone, BW Wind Services subscribed for 12.1 million shares at NOK 56 and purchased a further 715,000 in open market buys — combined consideration of roughly $74m USD. Scorpio Holdings, the second-largest holder at 12.8%, subscribed for nearly 7 million shares in the same period. Net insider buying over the past 90 days reached approximately $114m USD. These are not token acquisitions. The two largest shareholders materially increased exposure at prices below today's close, while much of the short-covering that followed in April and May has brought SI back near its lowest level in the tracked window.
The one prior earnings reaction in the dataset — Q4 results in late March — produced a muted -1.2% one-day move and a +1.3% five-day recovery. The Q1 miss today is larger relative to expectations, and the immediate price reaction has been sharper. Next results are not scheduled until August 25. Between now and then, the key variables to watch are contract announcements for the expanded fleet, any revision to the vessel utilisation guidance discussed on today's call, and whether the cost-to-borrow spike — currently a one-week anomaly — persists or fades as the post-earnings borrow demand normalises.
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