VNET Group has cleared its May 26 earnings print, but the bears have not blinked — and the broader peer group is now selling off sharply around it.
The short positioning story has barely moved post-earnings. SI % of free float holds at 13.2%, representing roughly 35.6 million shares — a level that has been essentially range-bound between 13.2% and 13.5% throughout May. The ORTEX short score of 71.1 has hovered in a tight 70–72 band for two weeks, signalling no capitulation from bears following the report. Official FINRA data puts days to cover near 6.8 — meaningful mechanical squeeze risk remains if sentiment turns. Cost to borrow, at 0.81% APR, has drifted 14% lower over the past month, meaning shorts face no financing pressure whatsoever. The most notable shift is in availability, which has rebounded to 108% after compressing sharply to a low of 79% just before earnings — the borrow pool is looser than it was pre-print, though well below the 180% readings of early May.
Options positioning has softened from the aggressive call-side tilt that defined the pre-earnings setup. The put/call ratio has edged back up to 0.32 from the sub-0.25 readings seen in mid-May, though it still runs below the 20-day average of 0.37. The shift is modest — options traders are less bullish than they were ahead of the print, but not yet defensive. The 52-week range of 0.17 to 0.97 puts the current reading in clearly call-heavy territory, just less extreme than a week ago.
The Street's posture on VNET is uniformly constructive, though the most recent analyst data worth citing is B of A's August 2025 target raise to $12.60 — meaningful analyst activity since then has been sparse. The stock's current price of $9.92 sits well below that target, implying material upside in the eyes of the coverage universe. Valuation is stretched in places: the P/E runs at 70.7x and price-to-book at 2.6x, with both expanding over the past month. EV/EBITDA at 10.5x is less alarming for the sector. Factor scores reflect the duality of the setup — EPS momentum ranks in the 86th percentile over 30 days and 82nd over 90 days, making the earnings revision trend genuinely strong. But the short score ranks in just the 4th percentile of the universe, confirming that VNET is among the most heavily shorted stocks by this measure.
The institutional picture adds texture. Point72 added 4.4 million shares in Q1 2026 and Balyasny built a position of 2.7 million shares in the same period, while Goldman Sachs added 4.4 million. Morgan Stanley, by contrast, trimmed 3.3 million shares. The concentrated ownership — Shandong Hi-Speed holds 38% of shares, and founder Sheng Chen controls another 7.7% — means the tradeable float is tighter than headline market cap implies, compounding the mechanical short-squeeze arithmetic.
What sharpens the setup this week is the divergence with peers. GDS fell 18.5% on the week and KC dropped 12.4%. Chinese data-centre and infrastructure names on domestic exchanges suffered similar declines. VNET, by contrast, lost only 1.7% — a relative outperformance that is either a sign of underlying resilience or a stock that has simply not yet caught up with the sector move. With the next earnings event flagged for September 2, the question is whether the short base — unchanged despite post-earnings opportunity to cover — will remain patient or whether the peer-group selloff eventually drags VNET into line.
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