POET Technologies opened June with a sharp reversal of the short-covering trend that dominated the prior two weeks — bears are back, and they moved fast.
Short interest has rebuilt aggressively. It climbed 39% over the past week to 20.8 million shares, equivalent to 15.8% of the free float. That is a full retracement to the mid-May peak level that the previous two notes flagged as an extreme. The prior notes chronicled the unwind: shorts trimmed from 20.8 million shares down to around 11.8 million by early May, then covered further through late May. All of that ground has now been reclaimed. The one-month increase is 51.6%, and the one-day jump alone was 6.8%. Bears who covered are back in size, or new sellers have entered — the net effect is the same.
The borrow market tells a more complicated story than the short interest figure alone suggests. Availability has swung sharply — from the 13–14% crisis levels of mid-May, through the partial recovery to roughly 50% described in the previous note, and now back up to 121%. That sounds loose, and relative to the near-exhaustion of five weeks ago it is. But the week-on-week direction is a 144% expansion in available shares, driven by a large influx of lendable supply rather than a reduction in borrows. Cost to borrow has continued falling — down 45% on the week to just 1.3%, a fraction of the 8%+ charged in late April. Cheaper, more available borrow makes it easier for new shorts to establish positions, which is consistent with the fresh wave of short interest now on the tape.
Options positioning remains comfortably bullish. The put/call ratio is 0.28, just below its 20-day average of 0.30, with a z-score close to zero. At its 52-week low of 0.03 in late April, options traders were heavily skewed to calls; that extreme has normalised, but the tone is still call-dominant. The disconnect between rising short interest and call-heavy options flow is the central tension in POET's positioning right now — equity shorts are rebuilding their bet against the stock, while derivatives traders are not hedging aggressively on the downside.
Analyst coverage is a limited input here. The most recent rating changes on record are from late 2024 — Northland Capital Markets and Craig-Hallum both hold bullish ratings with targets set at $7 and $5.50 respectively. With POET trading at $13.82 following an 89% one-month price surge, those targets are materially stale and not a reliable guide to where the Street thinks the stock should trade today. One recent note flagged a design win with a tier-one datacenter customer as a catalyst; the EPS surprise factor score ranks in the 91st percentile, suggesting the company has consistently beaten estimates. The ORTEX short score is 61.8 — elevated and stable over the past week, sitting well above neutral and consistent with a name under meaningful short-side scrutiny.
Insider activity reinforces caution on the ownership side. The controller sold roughly $1.23 million in stock on May 20 at prices around $14.22–14.69, the most recent transactions on file. Earlier in the year a C-level officer sold $362,500 at $7.25 in March. The 90-day insider net is a seller, at roughly $1.6 million in net proceeds. Insiders have been consistent sellers into the rally — none of the disclosed trades represent buying. Among institutional holders, Marex Group entered as the largest holder with 9.15 million shares as recently as May 14, a new position of nearly 9.1 million shares. MM Asset Management added 4.5 million shares as of May 18. The combination of significant new institutional ownership and persistent insider selling is a familiar tension in fast-moving small-cap names.
Among peers, HIMX gained 9.4% Tuesday and 11.9% on the week — a sharp contrast to POET's 0.5% daily pullback. WOLF jumped 15.3% Tuesday. The broader peer group was notably stronger on the day than POET, suggesting some rotation or idiosyncratic pressure on the stock.
The next earnings event is scheduled for August 12. With short interest back at its cycle peak, borrow cheapening, and insiders consistently selling into strength, the question heading into that print is whether the design-win narrative can sustain the stock at these levels long enough to shift the short-side calculus again.
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