Eco Oro Minerals heads into its May 7 earnings event with the lending market extraordinarily tight and short interest tripling from its late-March level — a striking setup for a stock trading at fractions of a cent.
The most telling signal right now is availability. The entire lending pool is essentially consumed, with availability registering near zero. Utilization has held between 99.8% and 100% every single day for the past six weeks — at its 52-week maximum — meaning there is almost no capacity left for new shorts to borrow. Short shares stepped up sharply in early April, from 714 to 1,903, then jumped again on April 21 to 2,210 — a tripling from end-of-March levels over roughly four weeks. The position is tiny in absolute terms at just 0.002% of the free float, so there is no classical short squeeze setup here. But the borrow exhaustion is real regardless of scale.
Cost-to-borrow data is stale by more than five weeks, last recorded at 1.16% in late March, so no current inference can be drawn on lending rate direction. What the utilization picture does confirm is that the few shares available to lend have been fully absorbed for an extended stretch — a condition that has persisted since at least mid-March with no sign of easing.
The ORTEX short score holds near 44.9, roughly mid-range, reflecting the contradiction at the heart of this name: borrow is fully deployed, but short interest as a fraction of float is negligible. The utilization rank sits in the 1st percentile — meaning near-maximum utilization — while the short score rank is in the 18th percentile, suggesting the broader short-side pressure on the name is moderate rather than extreme. Days-to-cover is reported at one day, consistent with the small absolute position size.
Earnings history adds an unusual dimension. The four prior reported events all produced significant next-day price moves: +12.5%, +33.3%, +33.3%, and 0.0% respectively — all to the upside. The last event on April 6 delivered a 12.5% one-day gain with no continuation. The May 7 event is roughly a week away. Institutional ownership is concentrated: Amber Capital holds just under 20% of shares, Paulson & Co around 11%, and Executive Chairman Courtenay Wolfe approximately 10% — that trio controls roughly 40% of the company. With float this concentrated and utilization at its ceiling, even a modest shift in sentiment around the upcoming event could move the needle sharply on the limited shares that trade.
The stock last traded at CAD 0.04 on April 24 — data is now six days stale — and fell 11% on the week. The one-month change is +33%, reflecting the April price action that coincided with the sharp rise in shorted shares. With borrow near fully exhausted and the next corporate event days away, the key watch point is whether any new shares enter the lending pool before May 7, and how the stock responds to whatever the event delivers.
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