GRPN heads into the first week of June with its short base starting to crack — but the borrow market remains almost completely frozen.
Short interest has eased from its recent peak. The ORTEX daily estimate puts SI at 31.6% of the free float, down from roughly 33.6% cited in notes published late May. That is a meaningful directional shift — shorts are trimming, not adding. The week-on-week decline is 6.6%, and the one-month move is also down 6.6%. The direction of travel has changed. For context, previous articles flagged a crowded short that had refused to budge even as the stock doubled from mid-March lows. That dynamic has now shifted: the stock gave back 9.1% on the week to close at $18.80, and some shorts have used the pullback to reduce exposure.
The lending market tells a tighter story. Availability has collapsed back to just 0.8% — meaning for every hundred shares already on loan, less than one share remains available to borrow. That is right at the floor the borrow market has been testing throughout May, with the 52-week low sitting at 0.57%. Availability dropped 61.6% on the week alone, reversing a brief loosening that had pushed the reading as high as 8% in early May. The cost to borrow, at 1.74% annualised, has nudged up 10% on the week, though it remains modest in absolute terms. The constraint here is not cost — it is supply. New short positions cannot be established at any meaningful scale. The ORTEX short score of 76.1 keeps among the most heavily tracked names in the market, though the score has eased slightly from 77.5 a week ago, consistent with the modest reduction in gross short interest.
Options traders are not adding to the bearish chorus. The put/call ratio at 0.38 is essentially flat to its 20-day average of 0.38, with a z-score near zero. That is far removed from the 52-week high of 1.20, and barely above the 52-week low of 0.36. Options positioning is neutral — neither a hedging surge nor a speculative call-buying frenzy. The options market is sitting on its hands while the short and borrow dynamics do the heavy lifting.
The Street is sharply divided. Goldman Sachs maintained its Sell rating in mid-May, raising its target to $13 from $10 — a sign of reluctant acknowledgment of the price move, but still implying meaningful downside from the current $18.80. The bull side has not updated its case in many months, with Northland Capital's Outperform at $44 and Roth Capital's Buy at $47 both dating from mid-2025. Given the stock trades at $18.80 today, those targets look stale and may not reflect current guidance. The mean analyst price target of $26.33 sits above the current price, but that composite is dominated by bull-side views that predate management's own guidance for billings declines of 2.5–5% and revenue declines of 5–7.5%. The PE at 11.3x and EV/EBITDA at 9.3x are not stretched, but the bear case rests on cash flow and refinancing risk, not valuation multiples.
Insider activity in May tells a mixed story. The CEO received a large equity award of 345,000 shares on May 1st. The COO took an award of 129,375 shares the same day, then sold 57,315 at $14.89 — worth roughly $853,000. The CFO followed a similar pattern: award received, then a sale of 35,973 shares at the same price. Award-and-sell sequences around restricted stock vesting are common and not inherently bearish, but the COO and CFO both liquidating material positions at $14.89 — well below the current $18.80 — is worth noting. The stock has run considerably since those transactions, suggesting the sellers left money on the table, but also that neither executive was accumulating ahead of the run.
The next confirmed earnings event lands on August 6. The last print produced a striking one-day move of 9.1% followed by a five-day move of 12.9%, consistent with the stock's history of sharp post-earnings reactions in either direction. With SI still above 30% of the float and availability near zero, the setup heading into that event will be the number to watch — specifically whether short covering continues to erode the gross position before the release, or whether borrow conditions tighten further and lock remaining shorts in place.
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