JSW — Jastrzębska Spółka Węglowa — enters the first week of June with short sellers stubbornly entrenched and the stock grinding lower, even as a recent narrative around stronger European coking coal demand struggles to gain traction in the price.
Short interest in the Polish miner is deeply embedded. At 9.37% of free float, JSW carries one of the heavier short positions on the Warsaw exchange, and the trajectory over the past six weeks is unambiguous: from 8.46% on April 21, shorts have climbed steadily to the current level, adding roughly 480,000 shares of net new borrowing across that stretch. The borrow market remains expensive — cost to borrow is running at 8.38% annualised — though that figure has eased slightly from the 8.96% peak seen in mid-May, a modest sign that new short demand has cooled at the margin without any meaningful unwind.
The lending pool tells a tighter story on availability. Only about 28% of shares already borrowed remain available for new positions, against a 52-week low of just 1.1% — a reminder of how stretched this borrow market can become. The current reading is actually a slight easing from the extreme tightness seen between May 20–26, when availability dropped below 20% for several consecutive sessions. That tightening-then-loosening pattern is worth tracking: it suggests some short covering happened late in May, consistent with the small dip in SI percentage seen on May 19–20, before positions were rebuilt into June.
The ORTEX short score reinforces the picture of a persistently bearish setup. At 74.6, the score has held between 74.5 and 75.3 for the past two weeks — elevated but no longer accelerating. Factor scores flesh out why: JSW ranks in the bottom decile on days-to-cover (8th percentile) and near the bottom on utilisation rank (6th percentile), confirming this is a name where the cost and friction of staying short are unusually high, yet bears are absorbing those costs regardless.
The fundamental backdrop gives bears legitimate material to work with. The PE ratio is deeply negative at -64.9, reflecting losses, and the price-to-book has compressed to 0.54 — below book value. EV/EBITDA of 2.7x is low in absolute terms but reflects depressed earnings rather than genuine cheapness. On EPS momentum, the picture is starkly split: the 30-day reading ranks in the 99th percentile (analysts revised sharply higher near-term), while the 90-day version sits at the 1st percentile, suggesting the positive revision cycle is very new and very fragile. The mean analyst price target of PLN 22.25, against a current price of PLN 27.72, implies the Street collectively sees the stock as overvalued by roughly 20% — a rare setup where a stock trades above consensus target even as it falls. The analyst recommendation differential ranks in the 94th percentile on bearishness.
Ownership is heavily concentrated. The State Treasury of Poland holds 55.2% of shares, leaving a genuinely thin free float for institutional trading. The remaining institutional holders — Vanguard, BlackRock, Dimensional, American Century — hold small positions, with most showing little recent change. Insider data is not actionable; the most recent disclosed trades date to 2017.
The last earnings print on May 19 saw JSW fall 2.4% on the day before recovering to gain 8.3% over the following five sessions — a pattern suggesting initial selling pressure that eventually found buyers. The next event is scheduled for August 20. Between now and then, the key variable is whether the positive EPS revision momentum of the past 30 days continues to build, or whether it proves as fleeting as the 90-day trend would suggest. With short interest sticky near multi-month highs, the borrow market moderately tight, and the stock already trading above the analyst consensus target, the setup into summer is one of competing pressures rather than clear resolution.
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