EDPF.Y — the OTC-traded ADR of Portuguese utility EDP, S.A. — enters its May 7 earnings release with a striking split in its lending market: short positions have collapsed to a fraction of their April peak, yet the cost to borrow those remaining shares has tripled in under a week.
The most striking development this week is in the borrow market. Cost to borrow has surged to 9.66% — more than three times the 3.13% level recorded on April 15, and roughly double where it stood just a week ago. That move is significant: it suggests meaningful demand for borrow is now chasing a much smaller pool of available stock, even as the absolute short position has shrunk dramatically. Short interest — at just 0.37% of the free float as of April 28 — has fallen roughly 90% from its early-April high of around 1.7% of float measured at the peak. The collapse in overall borrow demand is therefore not the story; the tripling of the price to borrow the shares that remain is. Availability has tightened sharply in concert: after sitting near zero utilisation through most of April 20–22, the lending pool climbed back to 39.6% utilised by April 28 — still well below the 52-week high of 86%, but the direction of travel is clearly tightening.
The ORTEX short score corroborates the shift. It jumped from 29.1 on April 20 to 43.7 by April 28 — a 50% rise in under two weeks. The score had been stable in the high-20s to low-30s for much of the month before the April 23 inflection, when the lending market repriced sharply and availability tightened. That pattern — score rising in tandem with cost to borrow, while gross short interest falls — typically points to a squeeze of concentrated residual positions rather than fresh directional shorting.
Valuation context adds a layer of complexity. EDP trades on a P/E of 14.8, down only marginally over the past month, and an EV/EBITDA of 42.5 — a multiple that has compressed by roughly 1.1 turns over 30 days, suggesting the market has modestly re-rated the stock. The price-to-book is 1.58. On factor scores, EDP earns a standout 99th-percentile dividend score — noteworthy given the dividend history appears dated to 2022 and the most recent data may reflect the Lisbon-listed shares in euros rather than the OTC ADR directly. EPS momentum scores are weak — 14th percentile over 30 days, 25th over 90 days — and the forward EPS growth rank sits at the 21st percentile, which flags that the Street sees limited near-term earnings acceleration.
The ownership structure provides important context on why short activity has always been modest here. China Three Gorges holds 21.7% of the company, while Corporación Masaveu holds a further 6.9%. BlackRock added 2.4 million shares in the quarter to March 31, and Vanguard and State Street both added positions over the same period. With roughly a third of the company locked up in strategic and long-horizon hands, the free float available to borrow is inherently constrained — which helps explain why even tiny changes in borrow demand produce outsized moves in cost to borrow and availability metrics.
On the news front, the week brought confirmation that Ocean Winds — EDP's offshore joint venture with ENGIE — exited two US offshore wind leases in a TotalEnergies-style deal, a strategic retreat from US waters that echoes wider industry caution on American offshore permitting. Separately, Fitch affirmed EDP's BBB credit rating with a stable outlook on April 20, and Kepler Capital reiterated its Buy on the EDPR subsidiary as recently as April 29. No analyst data on the parent's price target is current enough to cite.
With a Q1 earnings call scheduled for May 7, the setup to watch is whether the tripling in cost to borrow and the tightening availability reverse after the release — or whether residual short interest consolidates further into the event.
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