Resolute Mining heads into the back half of May with its share price under meaningful pressure and short interest quietly building — a combination that deserves attention even if neither signal is at extreme levels on its own.
The price tells the clearest story. RSG closed at A$1.245 on May 19, down nearly 9% on the week and off more than 12% across the month. That drop is broad-based across the ASX gold sector — EVN fell over 10% on the week, BC8 dropped nearly 12%, and WGX lost around 8%. RSG is roughly in the middle of that peer pack, suggesting gold price weakness and sector rotation are the primary drivers rather than stock-specific trouble. That said, Resolute did generate its own headline risk this week: the company released a scoping study for the ABC Project on May 13, only to retract it the following day. That kind of procedural stumble rarely inspires confidence, and may have added fuel to an already soft tape.
Short interest has been building steadily, though the absolute level stays modest. SI climbed from around 15.6 million shares in early April to 21.6 million shares by May 19 — a 38% rise over the month. As a share of the free float, that lands at roughly 1% — low in absolute terms, but the direction of travel is clearly upward, with a further 6% gain on the week. The ORTEX short score has ticked up alongside the SI build, moving from 29.7 on May 6 to 30.9 by May 19. It remains well below levels that would signal meaningful crowding, but the consistent grind higher is worth monitoring. Borrow costs are benign — cost to borrow runs at 0.78% annually — and availability is ample at over 4,000% of current short interest, meaning the lending market presents zero friction to anyone looking to add to a short position.
The institutional ownership picture adds an interesting wrinkle. Helikon Investments holds a 15% stake and added over 107 million shares in the most recent reporting period. State Street, American Century, and Northern Trust also reported material new positions or additions in April. That cluster of buying from institutional holders sits in direct contrast to the short interest build — larger, longer-term money is accumulating while more tactical positioning is leaning the other way. Northern Trust's 79-million-share addition stands out as particularly large relative to its starting position. Whether that represents a strategic overweight or index-rebalancing activity is unclear, but the flow is notable.
The analyst target of A$2.13 implies around 71% upside from the current price. No recent analyst rating changes appear in the data, but Macquarie's Outperform from late April is the most recent known call. The valuation picture supports the case that RSG trades cheaply: EV/EBITDA runs at 2.5x, price-to-earnings at 5.3x, and the earnings yield factor ranks in the 71st percentile of its universe. Against that, the quality and momentum signals are weaker — a stock that is cheap for identifiable reasons, including geographic risk from Mali operations.
The next scheduled event is a results release on August 21. Between now and then, the retracted ABC scoping study reissuance and any operational update from the Syama and Mako mines will be the main news flow to track.
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