Alliance Resource Partners heads into the week of June 3 with a story that is more about what is not happening than what is: short sellers are leaving, call options dominate, and the borrow market is wide open — yet the unit price remains stuck well below its three-month high of nearly $29.
The clearest directional signal is the steady retreat of short sellers. Short interest has fallen to roughly 1.4% of the free float, down almost 5% from a month ago and continuing a grind lower that has been consistent through May. At these levels, the short position is too thin to be a meaningful story in isolation — there is no crowding, no squeeze pressure, and no sign of a large bear thesis being built. Borrow conditions confirm the picture: cost to borrow ticked up sharply on a week-over-week basis to 0.53%, but the absolute level remains negligible. Availability is essentially uncapped — with shares available to borrow running at more than 99x the current short interest — so any new short seller faces no obstacle entering the trade. The ORTEX short score of 32.3 has drifted lower through the past two weeks, reflecting the easing pressure rather than building conviction either way.
Options positioning reinforces the constructive tilt. The put/call ratio has fallen to 0.40 — roughly 1.4 standard deviations below its 20-day average of 0.44 — and close to the lowest reading of the past year (the 52-week floor is 0.25). Fewer puts relative to calls signals that options participants are not paying up for downside protection. Whether that reflects confidence or simply thin open interest in a thinly followed coal MLP is worth keeping in mind, but the directional lean is unambiguously toward calls.
The Street view is stale but consistently supportive. Formal analyst coverage is limited; the last price target on record (from Texas Capital Securities initiating with a Buy at $30 in September 2025) sits around 19% above the current price of $25.50, and Benchmark has reiterated Buy through multiple earnings cycles. Both the bull case — Illinois Basin volume growth, 96% of 2025 tons contracted — and the bear case — higher per-ton costs, a downward EBITDA revision of roughly $8 million for full-year 2026 — date from late 2025, so treat them as directional context rather than live estimates. The factor score picture is mixed in a characteristic way for this type of asset: the dividend score ranks at the 85th percentile, reflecting the partnership's historically generous distribution history; EV/EBIT ranks in the 65th percentile at just over 5x; but 90-day EPS momentum trails at the 22nd percentile and the EPS surprise rank is in the 31st. Forward EPS growth looks strong on paper (72nd percentile rank), though that partly reflects a low-base comparison.
Ownership is concentrated and stable at the top. Founder Joseph Craft holds roughly 14.6% and Kathleen Craft holds another 12.6%; neither reported a change at last filing. Morgan Stanley Investment Management added materially in Q1, building its stake by nearly 1.5 million units to hold roughly 3.2% — the largest institutional move in recent filings. Energy Income Partners also added more than 437,000 units through April. The insider activity cluster from February — when the CFO, COO, and two SVPs all sold small parcels at $24.37 alongside their annual unit awards — reads as routine post-award selling rather than a directional signal.
The recent earnings pattern is worth noting. The April 27 Q1 print produced a 6.3% one-day gain, extending to 5.6% over the following week — the second successive beat-and-rise. The next scheduled earnings release is July 27. Between now and then, the key variables are per-ton cost trends in the Illinois Basin and whether contracted volumes translate into actual shipments after the delays flagged in prior quarters. That delivery execution question — not the short-interest picture, which is minimal — is the variable most worth watching into the summer.
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