DigitalBridge Group heads into its Q1 earnings call — scheduled for tomorrow, May 28 — with a transformative deal dominating the conversation and short sellers in a measured retreat.
This morning the company announced it will acquire ArcLight Capital Partners for up to $1.05 billion, comprising a $650 million base price plus up to $400 million in contingent payments. The deal is a direct statement of strategic intent: DigitalBridge is combining its digital infrastructure franchise with ArcLight's power-focused platform, betting that the convergence of AI computing demand and energy infrastructure will define the next phase of alternative asset management. Days earlier, on May 22, DigitalBridge and Aberdeen Investments also completed the acquisition of Equans Infra & Mobility to form a new e-mobility platform, Velian, in the Netherlands. The week has been defined by deal activity, not data points.
The short interest picture supports that narrative, but as context rather than the main event. Short interest has pulled back over the past month — down around 7% in terms of shares short — to roughly 9.5% of the free float. That remains a meaningful level, but the direction of travel has clearly shifted. Over the past week alone, short positions fell 40%, bringing the stock back toward mid-May levels after a brief build earlier in the month. The lending market is not under stress. Availability is running above 1,000% — more than ten shares available to borrow for every one currently lent out — making this one of the loosest borrow situations in recent months. Cost to borrow, while up 35% week-on-week to 0.68%, remains very low in absolute terms. Short sellers are not being squeezed; they are simply stepping back.
Options are the one positioning signal worth pausing on. The put/call ratio has moved to its highest level in several months, now 2.3 standard deviations above its 20-day average. That reads as hedging activity ahead of tomorrow's print, rather than directional conviction — traders buying protection rather than making a directional bet. The 52-week range on the PCR runs from 0.06 to 0.33, and the current 0.23 is elevated but not extreme.
The Street's posture toward DBRG is cautious. A wave of downgrades arrived in late December 2025, when multiple firms — including TD Cowen, RBC Capital, B. Riley, and Citizens — cut ratings from Buy to Hold or equivalent, largely clustering targets around $16. Raymond James went further in January, moving all the way to Underperform from Strong Buy. The most recent action of note was Truist Securities assuming coverage at Hold in late March with a $16 target. Against a current price of $15.69, those targets imply limited upside by the Street's own math — though the ArcLight announcement, if viewed positively, could prompt revisions. The analyst consensus sits at Sell, though much of that reflects the weight of the December downgrade cluster rather than recent conviction. The EV/EBITDA multiple has compressed by roughly 3x over the past 30 days to 27.3x, a notable re-rating lower. Price/book holds at 2.2x.
Institutional ownership tells a more constructive story. Several large holders added significantly in Q1 2026. Glazer Capital entered with over 9.3 million shares — all new. Vanguard Portfolio Management and UBS Asset Management both established fresh positions worth more than 8 million shares each. Goldman Sachs added 6.5 million shares. That institutional inflow, concentrated in January-through-March, helped underpin the 58% price rally over the past month, from the mid-$9s to the current $15.69. On the insider side, the entire C-suite — CEO Marc Ganzi, CFO Thomas Mayrhofer, COO Liam Stewart, President Ben Jenkins — all sold shares in a coordinated action on March 13, at prices around $15.37. These look like routine annual vesting sales rather than a signal of concern, given the uniform timing and modest individual size relative to total ownership.
The short score from ORTEX has drifted lower from a recent peak of 57.5 on May 14 to 54.9 today, consistent with the short-covering trend. Tomorrow's earnings call is the focal point — with two significant acquisitions announced in the past week and a set of institutional holders who have freshly committed capital, the question is less about whether short sellers will press and more about how management frames the ArcLight deal's economics and the path to fee-bearing capital growth from here.
See the live data behind this article on ORTEX.
Open DBRG on ORTEX →ORTEX Market Intelligence content is generated by AI from a snapshot of ORTEX's proprietary data. Content is informational only and does not constitute investment advice.
