AVEX reported on May 20 and the market's response was swift and unforgiving — an 8% single-day drop that has left the stock sitting 6.5% below where it began the week, despite the most uniformly bullish analyst opening chorus the name had seen since listing.
The earnings reaction deserves context. A prior print on April 20 produced a 33.6% one-day gain and a 26.1% five-day move — so the stock had already demonstrated it could swing hard in both directions around results. The May 20 print landed on the other side of that ledger. The close at $26.33 is still 32% above the $20 IPO-level insider buys placed on April 16 by the Founder, CEO, and CFO — but the week's price action suggests the numbers didn't fully match the enthusiasm that seven simultaneous analyst initiations had built into expectations.
Short positioning shifted meaningfully this week, and that shift is now the most important signal in the data. Estimated short interest climbed 24% over seven days to roughly 2.4 million shares. That is a notable build in a single week for a name with this ownership structure. The percent-of-float figure is not calculable from available data, but the directional move is clear: more traders added to short positions heading into — and through — the earnings event.
The borrow market tells a different and somewhat contradictory story. Cost to borrow has collapsed from a peak above 56% in late April to just 2.5% today — down 25% on the week alone and nearly 93% from its one-month high. That plunge signals the acute borrow squeeze of mid-April has fully unwound. Availability has tightened from the very loose levels seen in early May (above 400%) to 125% currently, which is still in the normal-to-tight range rather than stressed. The ORTEX short score has nudged up to 60.4 from 49.4 on May 12 — a meaningful jump tied to the rising short interest — but remains well short of extreme readings. Taken together, this is a market that is incrementally more bearish this week, but not positioned for a crisis.
The Street's conviction remains intact for now. All seven initiating firms — Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, BofA, Jefferies, Needham, Raymond James, and Baird — put Buy or Outperform ratings on the stock on May 12 with targets ranging from $32 to $45. The consensus mean is $35.25, implying roughly 34% upside from the current $26.33 close. The valuation picture is not cheap: the trailing P/E runs at 63.6x and EV/EBITDA at 26.4x, which leaves little room for execution misses. The options market has moved in a more call-heavy direction over recent sessions, with the put/call ratio easing to 0.40 from 0.76 at its most defensive point on May 5 — suggesting options traders are not, at this moment, piling into downside protection despite the post-earnings drop.
Ownership remains highly concentrated. ATS PubCo Holdings holds 49.5% and Fidelity National Financial holds 11.7%, with total disclosed holders numbering just five. That structure limits the float available for active repositioning and amplifies the impact of short-side flows on the lending market. The insider purchases from April remain on the books — $1.48M net across 90 days — with no selling reported since the IPO-level buys.
The question that now frames the week ahead is whether the post-earnings pullback prompts any of the seven initiating analysts to revisit their targets, or whether the Street holds its opening positions and the stock finds buyers at current levels relative to that $35.25 consensus.
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