PSNY heads into June with its lending market nearly seized up — and a short position that has been rebuilding fast all week.
Availability has collapsed to just 4.4% of outstanding short interest, meaning fewer than one share remains available for every twenty already lent out. That is among the tightest levels seen this year; the 52-week floor was zero percent, reached earlier in 2026, and the stock is tracking back toward it. The move happened quickly: availability was running above 24% as recently as June 1, before dropping sharply overnight. Short interest itself climbed 31% over the past week to roughly 2.37 million shares, with the single-day jump on June 2 registering nearly 5%. That puts SI at 7.1% of free float — well into territory where borrow dynamics become a story in their own right.
The cost of borrowing tells a subtler story. At 34.3% annualised, the rate is still high by any conventional measure, but it has actually eased over the past month — down from a peak above 50% in late April. That decline reflects the brief loosening of the borrow pool through May, when availability widened back above 20% and gave some shorts the chance to add positions at lower cost. Now that window has closed again. With availability back near zero, the question is whether fresh short demand finds the market too expensive to act on, or whether it pushes cost to borrow back toward its spring highs.
Options traders, by contrast, are not positioned defensively. The put/call ratio is 0.21, slightly below its 20-day average of 0.25 and well short of the stock's 52-week high of 1.68. Call volume has been running ahead of puts — not characteristic of a name where the borrow market is this constrained. The divergence is notable: the lending market is flashing stress, while options buyers are leaning constructively. These two signals are pulling in opposite directions, and the tension between them is the defining feature of the setup right now.
The ORTEX short score has risen to 88.3 — the highest reading in the trailing 10-day window and one that places the stock in the most aggressively shorted cohort in the universe. The score has climbed steadily from 83.9 on May 21. Factor rankings reinforce the picture: PSNY ranks in the 1st percentile on short score across the universe, the 3rd percentile on days-to-cover, and the 7th on utilisation rank. The one bright spot in the factor data is EPS surprise, which comes in at the 88th percentile — Polestar has been beating consensus estimates more reliably than investors might expect given the structural margin problems.
And those margin problems remain severe. The bear case centres on a Q2 2025 gross margin of -97.2%, a number the Street has not been able to look past. Cantor Fitzgerald downgraded to Underweight back in February, and the analyst consensus price target is $17.50 against a current price of $19.43 — suggesting the Street, on balance, sees PSNY as already priced above fair value. The bull case rests on the South Korean production facility, roughly $2.1 billion in secured and renewed loan facilities, and an aggressive cost-reduction programme that management believes will move margins toward positive territory in the second half of 2025. The revenue growth trajectory is real — ORTEX growth scores rank it near the top of EV peers — but quality metrics (Piotroski F-score of 3, deeply negative Z-score) flag meaningful financial stress that the growth story has not yet offset. Last year's earnings reactions have been sharp in both directions: the May 7 print produced a one-day gain of 10.6%, while the April 17 announcement triggered a 7.5% drop.
The next earnings event is scheduled for August 27. Between now and then, the most important variables to track are whether the borrow pool tightens further toward zero, whether cost to borrow reaccelerates back above 40%, and how the gross margin trajectory evolves in interim delivery data — given how wide the gap between the bull and bear cases still is.
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