SQM has just reported Q1 results — the earnings print the options market spent two weeks hedging against — and the stock is essentially flat on the week at $80.43, down less than 0.03%.
The clearest post-earnings shift is in short positioning. Shares short fell another 43% over the past month, from around 1.53 million in early May to roughly 1.09 million now. That retreat accelerated through the earnings window. Bears have not simply paused — they have unwound a material portion of what was already a modest position. The borrow market confirms there is no friction driving the exit: availability remains essentially unconstrained, with cost to borrow at just 0.53%. That is roughly double last week's low, but still firmly cheap territory — the brief spike to 4.1% on May 8 was an outlier, not a trend. The ORTEX short score of 27.1 ranks in the 87th percentile for absence of short pressure.
Options positioning has not fully relaxed despite the print passing. The put/call ratio is running at 0.38, about 1.3 standard deviations above its 20-day mean of 0.29. That is modestly elevated rather than extreme — the 52-week high is 1.42 — but the ratio has stayed sticky near current levels all week, even as the earnings overhang cleared. Earlier in May it was as low as 0.21. Options traders appear to be carrying some residual hedges rather than aggressively unwinding them post-print.
The Street is broadly constructive but divided on valuation. JPMorgan carries an Overweight with a $93 target, and Deutsche Bank holds a Buy with a $91 target — both set in January and both above the current $80.43 price. BofA remains an outlier at the bearish end, maintaining Underperform with a $53 target, raised from $49 in March. The mean analyst target of $81 is essentially in line with where the stock trades, leaving limited implied upside from consensus alone. EV/EBITDA has drifted lower over the past 30 days, down modestly to 8.6x, while the PE of 14.3x has compressed roughly 2.4 points over the same period — both moves consistent with a stock that has given back 9.4% over the past month. Factor scores tell a mixed story: EPS momentum over 90 days ranks in the 82nd percentile, and the dividend score is exceptional at the 96th percentile, but forward earnings growth scores just 29th percentile — a reflection of the bear case that low lithium pricing drags the 2026 EBITDA envelope.
The ownership structure is worth noting because of what it implies for the float. Inversiones SQYA holds 24.6% and Tianqi Lithium holds 22.2% — together accounting for nearly half the company. Neither has moved recently. BlackRock added roughly 1.2 million shares through April, and Van Eck added around 800,000 over the same period. Those are the only meaningful recent institutional flows in the top-holder list. With so much stock locked up in two anchor positions and the borrow market showing near-unlimited availability of 85 million shares, the free float dynamics are unusual: there is plenty of stock to borrow, but the anchor holders effectively set a floor beneath which the float becomes thin.
The closest US peer, ALB, fell 0.6% on the week versus SQM's near-flat print — a narrow gap that suggests both names are trading in step on lithium macro rather than diverging on company-specific news. The next scheduled earnings event is August 19, which is the next hard catalyst on the calendar to watch.
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