Columbus McKinnon enters its May 28 earnings window with short sellers quietly rebuilding positions and options traders unusually bullish — a divergence that makes the current setup worth watching.
The short side has been on the move. Short interest climbed 7.4% over the past week to nearly 5% of the free float — back to levels last seen at the end of March. The build has been steady rather than explosive: shorts added roughly 112,000 shares over the week, nudging the position from 4.58% to just under 5%. That's not extreme territory, but the direction of travel is consistent and the pace has accelerated. Days to cover on the FINRA-reported figure run at 3.3 days, a modest but not insignificant drag.
The lending market, however, is not amplifying the bearish signal. Availability remains generous — borrow demand is low relative to supply, and the availability picture is nothing like the stress seen at the March 31 peak, when utilization briefly touched the 52-week high. Cost to borrow is 0.41%, having spiked to 0.61% on April 27 before retreating. That volatility looks more like technical noise than a structural shift. For new shorts, entry is cheap and easy. Borrow conditions are not signalling any squeeze pressure.
Options are telling the opposite story. The put/call ratio has dropped to 0.71 — almost two standard deviations below its 20-day average of 1.00. That's a sharp pivot. For the prior three weeks, PCR ran consistently above 1.00, touching a recent peak of 1.12 in early April when macro uncertainty was at its height. The shift since April 21 is abrupt: PCR collapsed from 0.98 to 0.73 in three sessions. Call buyers have taken over, and the reading is now closer to the 52-week low of 0.05 than the 52-week high of 1.18. This is the most call-skewed the options market has been in weeks.
On the Street, the most recent analyst data worth citing dates to mid-February and should be read cautiously given the subsequent price decline. JP Morgan maintained its Overweight rating while trimming its target from $29 to $27 — itself a move made when the stock was trading in the low $20s. With CMCO now at $15.58, the gap between the current price and even the most cautious published target has widened considerably. The forward EPS trajectory is one bright spot: the 12-month forward EPS growth rank scores in the 95th percentile of the universe — meaning analysts have revised up their forward estimates sharply even as the stock has sold off. The EV/EBITDA multiple has compressed by a meaningful 1.67 turns over the past 30 days, landing at 2.2x. Price-to-book is 0.51x. These are deep-value levels for an industrial company with a functioning earnings stream.
The stock fell 2.7% on Tuesday to close at $15.58, though it's barely changed on the week — down just 0.4%. The one-month picture is more constructive: the stock is up 10.7% from its April lows. Peers have had a rougher week. PCAR fell 6% over the same period, and KAI dropped 3.8%. LECO and TKR both ended lower too. Against that backdrop, CMCO's relative stability over the week stands out.
One note on the earnings history: the February 2026 print saw the stock add 0.7% on the day but give back 12.7% over the following five sessions. The January 2026 event showed a similar shape — a mild positive day-one reaction followed by significant five-day drift. That pattern — post-earnings decay rather than day-one shock — may be worth factoring into how traders position ahead of the May 28 release.
The next five weeks leave two distinct narratives running in parallel: short sellers adding methodically to a position while options traders bet on the upside. One side is right. The May 28 print is where the tension resolves.
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