Crescent Energy finds itself in a peculiar position this week: short sellers are rapidly unwinding exposure even as the stock falls sharply, creating a split between price action and positioning that defines the current setup.
The short interest story is the week's headline. CRGY's SI % FF has collapsed from roughly 12.4% in late April to 9.1% now — a 20-plus percent drop in reported short shares over the past week alone. That's a meaningful unwind. The move follows a notable event on May 7, when a large block of shares tied to Liberty Mutual Foundation (a 10% owner) were sold — 32.6 million shares at $12.33, worth just under $402 million. That single transaction likely explains a chunk of the short interest reshuffling, as positions tied to that overhang got reassessed. Even stripping out that noise, the direction of travel is clear: shorts have been cutting exposure all month.
Borrow conditions tell a comfortable story for anyone still short. Cost to borrow has ticked up about 11% on the week but remains trivially low at 0.48%. Availability has widened dramatically — now running at 1,435%, up from around 848% two weeks ago — meaning the lending market is awash with supply relative to demand. There is no squeeze dynamic here. The ORTEX short score has also eased from a recent high of 55.6 on May 18 to 47.4 now, consistent with the broader unwinding. Options positioning has nudged slightly more defensive, with the put/call ratio at 0.185 versus a 20-day average of 0.168 — above the norm but nowhere near alarming, and well below the 52-week high of 0.52.
The Street remains constructive even as the stock slides. The mean analyst price target is $17.36, against a close of $12.43, implying roughly 40% upside — a gap that several firms have been closing upward in recent months. Mizuho raised its target to $15 just this week while holding a Neutral rating. Wells Fargo, Keybanc, and Piper Sandler have all raised targets this year, most clustering in the $16–$19 range with Overweight ratings. JP Morgan reinstated coverage in March at Overweight with a $19 target. The direction of analyst moves has been almost uniformly upward. Valuation sits undemanding: EV/EBITDA near 3.4x and a P/E below 5.2x, both compressing modestly over 30 days. Factor scores highlight strong EPS momentum — 87th percentile on 90-day EPS momentum and 88th percentile on forward EPS growth — though the EPS surprise rank is weak at just 7th percentile. The dividend score ranks in the 90th percentile, though dividend history in the data is stale and should not be relied upon.
The peer comparison underscores that this is an oil patch problem, not a CRGY-specific one. MTDR fell nearly 11.6% on the week — steeper than CRGY's 9.4% drop. CHRD lost 7.8%, PR fell 6.2%, and even the larger-cap names like OVV and APA shed 5–7%. Broader E&P weakness tied to softer crude is doing most of the work on CRGY's price, not stock-specific deterioration.
On the institutional side, BlackRock added 1.4 million shares as of April 30 to reach 11.3% of the company, and KKR holds 8.7% — last reported as of March 31 with a 1.9 million share increase. State Street added 3.3 million shares. These are incremental increases rather than aggressive builds, but the direction is positive and the holder base reads as sticky.
The next scheduled earnings event is August 3. With the stock printing at $12.43 and the analyst community's consensus sitting $4–$6 higher, the next print becomes a referendum on whether the FCF-generation thesis survives a softer commodity price environment — and whether the management team's shareholder return commitments hold.
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