CIFR enters the final stretch before its June 2 earnings call carrying a rare and uncomfortable contradiction: the Street has turned decisively more bullish over the past two weeks, yet short sellers are quietly adding to their positions at the same time.
The analyst community has been unusually active. Morgan Stanley's Stephen Byrd raised his target to $42.50 this week while holding an Overweight — the highest price target in the group by a wide margin. Jefferies initiated with a Buy at $32 just days earlier. Needham, Macquarie, Rosenblatt, KBW and HC Wainwright all lifted their targets earlier in May after the Q1 print on May 5. The mean target across the group stands near $30.50, well above the current price of $18.80. The analyst rec differential ranks at the 98th percentile of the market — a rare degree of consensus bullishness. The bull case centres on hyperscale HPC data centre contracts and rising power-hungry AI demand; the bear case flags the Q1 revenue miss, the ongoing drag from winding down Bitcoin mining, and execution risk on customer onboarding.
Short interest tells a different story. Shorts have added steadily for three straight weeks. SI as a percentage of the free float climbed from 15.2% on April 23 to 16.9% now — up roughly 10% over the past month in share terms. That level has been consistently elevated since the company began its pivot from crypto mining to HPC infrastructure. Borrowing remains remarkably cheap at 0.45%, barely changed from recent weeks, and availability is wide at 311% of current short interest. There is no squeeze pressure here. New shorts face negligible friction entering positions, and that loose borrow environment has allowed the build to happen without any cost escalation.
Options positioning has turned defensive in a single session. The put/call ratio jumped to 0.52 on May 19 — nearly three standard deviations above its 20-day average of 0.37, and approaching the 52-week high of 0.56. That is a sharp, sudden shift. For most of the past month the options market was strongly call-biased; this week's move into puts stands out as the clearest same-day signal that at least some participants are buying downside protection ahead of the earnings event.
Insider activity over May adds a note of caution. COO Patrick Kelly sold 48,000 shares at $19.36 on May 12. Two independent directors also sold in early May — Cary Grossman at $21.82 and Bo Williams at $22.26 — for a combined $1.06 million. The sales follow award grants at the end of March, so some of the selling represents routine tax-related disposal, but the fact that three insiders sold into the post-earnings price strength is worth registering. The 90-day net figure is positive in share terms, reflecting the March awards, but the cash transactions over the past six weeks are uniformly on the sell side.
On the peer tape, the week has been rough across the digital asset infrastructure cohort. WULF dropped 6.4% and RIOT fell 7.6%. IREN was the hardest hit, down 15.6%. CIFR itself fell 6.3% on the week, broadly in line with the weaker names. CLSK was the standout exception, rallying 9.1%. The divergence within the cohort is notable — macro crypto tailwinds are not lifting all boats equally, and CIFR is currently tracking closer to the laggards than the leaders.
The setup heading into June 2 therefore balances a genuinely enthusiastic analyst consensus against persistent short positioning, a sudden one-day options hedge, and a stock trading at a 38% discount to the mean analyst target. The key watch points are whether management can demonstrate progress on contracted HPC capacity conversion and whether the Q1 revenue shortfall was a timing issue or a signal of deeper onboarding friction.
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