Short sellers have been accumulating into today's print — and the short score jump underlines the tension.
The clearest positioning signal is in short interest. At 7.7% of the free float, UHAL's short interest has climbed 10.6% over the past month, even as the last two sessions have seen a modest pullback of around 1.4%. The ORTEX short score has moved up to 70.4, its highest reading of the recent window and comfortably in the top 5% of the universe by short-score rank. Borrow remains cheap at 0.71% cost-to-borrow — essentially no friction for short sellers — while availability has loosened sharply over the week, dropping back to around 196%, well below its recent peak of 288% but still indicating ample supply for anyone wanting to add to a short position. Days to cover run at nearly 10 days on FINRA data, meaning any short-covering event would take time to unwind.
Options traders, by contrast, are leaning mildly bullish ahead of the result. The put/call ratio has eased to 0.69, roughly a full standard deviation below its 20-day average of 0.73 — a signal that call demand is running slightly above normal relative to puts. That divergence is notable: one camp is hedging with shorts in the stock lending market, while options positioning looks less defensive than usual. The stock itself has given back just over 1% in the past month, closing Wednesday at $52.04, though a 3.5% recovery on the week narrows the damage.
The structural bear case is easy to identify. The ORTEX stock score has slipped to 55.5, weighed down by a quality rank near 27 — the Piotroski F-Score sits at just 4 and the Z-Score at 1.15, flagging stretched financial health. A negative five-year EBIT CAGR and negative free cash flow metrics drag the growth pillar to 48. The single bright spot is value, where a price-to-book ratio below 1.3 provides some floor, though a trailing P/E above 39 limits the valuation argument. Analyst coverage is effectively dormant — the consensus as of last February reflected a $75.45 mean target, implying significant upside from current levels, but with no recent changes to cite that figure carries limited current weight. The most recent comparable earnings event, in February 2026, saw the stock fall 15.4% on the day and nearly 17.4% over the following five days — a reminder that the market has punished misses sharply.
Institutional ownership offers one stabilising feature: Foster Road LLC holds roughly 43% of shares, a concentrated anchor position that structurally limits the float available to short sellers regardless of borrowing conditions. The earnings print today will test whether the operating business can show any recovery in growth metrics sufficient to shift the short-score trajectory — or whether the elevated short interest proves prescient.
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