NIO enters its June 4 earnings report with short sellers still leaning in — but the lending market has loosened since last week's trader note flagged the tightest conditions of the recent cycle.
The short position has held near elevated levels. Shares short climbed 6.2% across the week ending May 28 to approximately 142.6 million — broadly consistent with the rebuild described in last week's note, though Monday's session showed a marginal 0.3% pullback. The more meaningful development is in borrow availability, which has recovered sharply from the 27.5% trough hit on May 25. By May 28, availability had rebounded to 47.7% — still tight relative to the 52-week range, but no longer at the edge of constraint. Cost to borrow remains negligible at 0.61% annualised, barely changed on the month. The overall picture is active short positioning with a lending market that has partially re-opened — not a squeeze setup, but not a frictionless one either.
Options are sending a different signal. The put/call ratio of 0.71 is fractionally below its 20-day average of 0.72, and the z-score of -0.26 confirms positioning is almost perfectly neutral. At the 52-week low of 0.61 and high of 0.80, the current reading sits well within the middle of the range. Options traders are not hedging aggressively into this print — a contrast worth naming explicitly, given that short interest is still running near a one-month high.
The debate between bulls and bears pivots on scale and credibility of growth. The bull case rests on NIO's battery-swapping differentiation, a broadening model lineup, and a path toward meaningful autonomous driving capability. The bear case is blunter: 326,000 units sold in 2025 is just 2% of China's passenger NEV market, new model launches have disappointed, and the competitive pressure from BYD and domestic peers is structural rather than cyclical. The EPS surprise factor score ranks at the 93rd percentile — NIO has consistently beaten reduced estimates — but EPS momentum over both 30 and 90 days ranks at the 1st percentile, meaning revisions have moved sharply lower heading in. Analysts flagging the name since late 2025 have drifted cautious: Macquarie downgraded to Neutral and Barclays held Underweight into the cycle, while HSBC upgraded to Buy in March with a $6.80 target close to where the stock trades now. The mean analyst target of $47 is almost certainly a data artefact reflecting stale estimates or ADR pricing discrepancies — it should not be read as genuine consensus upside.
NIO's most recent earnings print, on May 21, saw the stock fall nearly 7% in a single session before recovering most of that over the following five days. The June 4 report arrives with the stock back at $5.60 — 6.5% above the post-May-21 trough — recovering partly alongside XPEV, which gained 5.2% on the week, though LI fell 7.3% over the same period, reflecting how divided the Chinese EV sector remains on near-term volume expectations.
The print tests whether NIO can demonstrate that the May delivery momentum — which drove short covering through mid-month before sellers returned — translates into revenue and margin improvement, or whether the bear case on market share and execution remains the more durable narrative.
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