PONY enters the post-earnings week with a split personality: the stock jumped 12% over the past five days to $9.34, yet short sellers are adding rather than retreating, and the borrow market has tightened meaningfully since the Q1 print.
The positioning story is the central tension. Short shares climbed 4% over the week to roughly 26.5 million, extending a steady build that has run for the past month — up nearly 10% over 30 days. That makes this the heaviest short positioning since the company's listing. The ORTEX short score holds at 73, near its recent ceiling, reflecting both the volume of shorts and the tightening of borrow conditions. Availability has dropped to 64.7% — down sharply from above 90% just two weeks ago and well below the 120%-plus readings seen in mid-April. The borrow market has not seized, but the direction is clear: it is getting harder to source shares. Cost to borrow, at 0.76%, remains low in absolute terms and is not yet a deterrent — but the 13% weekly rise is worth monitoring. With the 52-week availability low having touched near zero, the lending pool has demonstrated it can drain quickly on this name.
Options traders are less alarmed than the short book suggests. The put/call ratio has ticked up to 0.22, modestly above its 20-day average of 0.18 and roughly one standard deviation high, but still near the bottom of its 52-week range. The 52-week PCR high is 1.40 — a level that implies genuine downside hedging pressure. At 0.22, options positioning looks mildly cautious at most. That contrast is notable: shorts are building at a record pace while options desks are showing only routine defensive activity, not fear.
The Street remains constructive in tone but selective on valuation. Analyst coverage initiated over the past year has leaned bullish — HSBC, Macquarie, Citi, UBS, Deutsche Bank, BofA, and Jefferies all carry Buy or Outperform ratings with targets ranging from $16.60 to $32.80. The mean target of $21.12 implies roughly 126% upside from current levels. Barclays is the lone dissenter, sitting at Equal-Weight after trimming its target from $15 to $10 in late March — the only recent price target move in the data. That cut to $10, now below the current price of $9.34, reflects the revenue miss more than the loss beat. The bulls are anchored to the fleet expansion story and narrowing losses; Barclays is anchored to the revenue shortfall and a multiple that, even after a 45% decline from the January peak, remains stretched. EV/EBITDA is deeply negative, the P/E is meaningless on negative earnings, and the price/book of 3.1x is the most tangible anchor the valuation carries.
Institutional ownership adds an interesting layer. HongShan Capital added 6.5 million shares in Q1, Morningside added 5 million, and Vanguard Capital Management established a new position of 7.9 million shares — all as reported through March 31. FMR (Fidelity) added nearly 2 million shares through April. Against that, Goldman Sachs trimmed by 4.3 million shares and Morgan Stanley cut by 1.4 million as of May 13. The picture is one of long-only and growth-oriented money moving in while the sell-side desks pare back — a divergence that broadly mirrors the bull/bear split in analyst positioning. Toyota remains a significant holder at 9.8%, unchanged, which continues to provide a strategic anchor to the shareholder register.
What to watch next: the pace of borrow availability into June will signal whether the post-earnings short build is consolidating or accelerating, and the gap between the fleet expansion ambition management restated on May 26 and the actual revenue trajectory heading into H2 reporting is the axis around which the bull-bear debate will turn.
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