Navitas Semiconductor closed Tuesday at $31.79 — up 64% on the week — and the short sellers who have been riding this position for months still haven't blinked.
The short interest story has been the dominant thread across the past two trader notes, and the data has not changed in any meaningful way. Short interest remained at 18.5% of free float on May 26, essentially flat over the past two weeks despite the stock's continued climb. The position peaked at roughly 20.9% of float in late April and has drifted only modestly lower since — a decline measured in fractions of a percentage point, not in genuine covering. Some 42.6 million shares remain short, and the May 8 weekly reading was still above 48 million before a partial unwind that has since stalled completely. Cost to borrow has crept up 24% over the past week to 0.46%, a small but directionally notable move given the lack of any squeeze dynamics in the lending market itself.
The borrow market tells a more complicated story than the headline short interest figure. Availability is actually loose — running at roughly 173% of short interest, meaning there are significantly more shares available to lend than are currently borrowed. That is well off the tightest readings of the past year, when availability dipped to a 52-week low of just 7.9%. The lending pool is not constrained, borrowing costs remain low in absolute terms, and there is no mechanical squeeze pressure visible in the data. What keeps this interesting is purely the P&L math: shorts initiated at sub-$10 levels are now sitting on losses exceeding 200%.
Options traders have moved to their most defensive positioning of the past year. The put/call ratio hit 0.56 on May 26 — the highest 52-week reading — and now sits nearly two standard deviations above its 20-day average of 0.46. That is not the signature of a crowd betting on further upside. It looks more like hedging pressure from holders who have ridden a fast move and want protection into the June 25 earnings date. The shift has been rapid: as recently as mid-May, the PCR was running below 0.45.
Analyst targets remain structurally detached from where the stock actually trades. The consensus mean price target of $12.59 — itself unchanged since May 6 — is less than 40% of the current price. Even Needham's aggressive $21 target, raised on May 6 from $13, is now 34% below the close. As flagged in recent notes, these figures reflect pre-rally positioning and should not be treated as live conviction. What the Street debate does reveal is the underlying tension: bulls point to GaN power IC exposure across AI data centres and grid infrastructure, with the company projecting 60–75% CAGR in its addressable market through 2030. Bears cite competition from established players and limited geographic diversification. The EPS surprise factor score ranks in the 94th percentile of the universe — the company has consistently beaten estimates — but EPS momentum scores (16th percentile on 30-day, 15th on 90-day) flag that forward estimates are being revised lower even as historical beats accumulate. Price-to-book has expanded to 20.5x alongside the rally.
The broader semiconductor peer group has moved sharply higher in tandem this week. MU gained 31% on the week and AEHR added an almost identical 31.5%. SYNA rose 24% and QCOM added 22%. The sector-wide bid makes it harder to isolate any Navitas-specific catalyst, though NVTS's 64% weekly gain still comfortably outpaced every comparable name. Prior earnings history is also worth noting without reading too much into it: the May 5 print produced a 4.8% next-day move and a 20.9% five-day move — a positive reaction, but modest relative to the scale of the current rally.
With June 25 earnings now less than four weeks away, the question narrowing around NVTS is not whether shorts will cover before the print, but how much additional pain the existing position can absorb — and whether the most defensive options setup in a year reflects holders bracing for the same answer.
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