Navitas Semiconductor has now risen 37% in a week and 91% in a month, yet short sellers have barely moved — a standoff that becomes more charged with each passing session ahead of June 25 earnings.
The price action is the story. NVTS closed Friday at $29.25, up 20% on the day alone. That puts it more than double the most aggressive recent analyst upgrade — Needham's raise to $21 on May 6, which was itself the boldest target on the Street. The mean consensus target of $12.59 is now less than half the current price. As noted in the May 22 trader note, this gap was already unusual; it has since widened further. The analyst data should be treated as structurally stale relative to where the stock actually trades, and any Street targets cited here reflect pre-rally positioning, not current conviction.
Short sellers are not covering in any meaningful way. At 18.7% of free float — roughly 43 million shares — the position has barely shifted over the past two weeks. Compare that to late April, when short interest briefly touched 20.9% of float: the mild unwind since then has stalled completely despite the stock adding 27% since the May 22 note. Cost to borrow at 0.42% remains remarkably low, and borrow availability at 171% — more than enough supply for existing and prospective shorts — confirms the lending market is under no squeeze pressure. The ORTEX short score of 62.6 is elevated but has barely moved over the past ten sessions, suggesting the conviction on the short side is sticky rather than building. This is an unusually stubborn short base for a stock that has nearly doubled in a month.
Options traders are sending a more cautious signal. The put/call ratio at 0.55 is a 52-week high and running more than two standard deviations above its 20-day average of 0.45. That's the most defensive options posture NVTS has seen in at least a year. The PCR has drifted steadily higher over the past two weeks as the stock rallied — a divergence that points to hedging activity rather than fresh bullish positioning in calls. Whether that protection is coming from long holders locking in gains or shorts buying calls as insurance is hard to determine from the ratio alone, but the directional read is clear: options participants are more cautious now than at any point in recent history, even as the stock breaks records.
The institutional picture adds some texture. BlackRock added 2.7 million shares in the most recent reporting period. Goldman Sachs built a position of 3.3 million shares, adding 2.3 million in Q1. Point72 and D.E. Shaw both initiated or materially increased in the quarter, with D.E. Shaw adding 3.2 million shares. These are not passive flows — active managers with short-selling mandates were building on both sides of the book. Meanwhile, director Ranbir Singh — still the largest named holder at 7.98% — sold 389,000 shares in February at $9.52, a price now more than three times removed from Friday's close. The insider register is net positive over 90 days on a shares basis, but that reflects stock awards rather than open-market conviction buys.
The earnings history provides relevant context. The last print on May 5 saw the stock add 4.8% on day one, then 20.9% over the following week — the rally that has since compounded into the current move. The print before that saw a 0.6% day-one move followed by a 29.8% five-day gain. NVTS has a consistent pattern of grinding higher after results rather than gapping sharply at the open. The next earnings event is June 25.
What to watch into that date is whether the short base finally begins to move. Eighteen-percent short interest in a stock that has doubled without a meaningful unwind means either the thesis is very firmly held or the shorts are waiting for a catalyst — June 25 will test which it is.
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