YB Short Sellers Step Back as Borrow Costs Ease

Yuanbao Inc. enters the back half of June with its short sellers in full retreat — a sharp unwind that stands out against a backdrop of continued price weakness.

The most striking development this week is the scale of short covering. Short interest fell 25% in a single session on June 9, dropping to roughly 45,000 shares, or just 0.1% of the free float. Over the past month, short positions have been cut by more than half — down 52% from late April levels, when nearly 93,500 shares were short. That level was itself the highest in the 30-day history available, suggesting a meaningful positioning cycle has run its course. With SI now this low, the short side is essentially a rounding error on the stock's ownership picture.

Borrow conditions confirm the retreat. Cost to borrow has fallen sharply — down 44% on the week to 4.3%, its lowest reading since late April. Availability is running at roughly 183%, which means lenders currently hold almost twice as many shares as are already borrowed. That is comfortably in the normal range and represents a notable loosening from May 18, when availability briefly tightened to around 40% — the tightest the borrow market has been in the past year. That episode has now fully unwound, and there is little pressure in the lending market to suggest fresh short demand is building.

The ORTEX short score adds a calibrating note. It has drifted down to 48.4 from 49.5 roughly two weeks ago — a mild softening that confirms the directional story but is far from dramatic. The factor scores point in a similar direction: short score ranks in the 14th percentile and days-to-cover in the 6th. Neither reading flags any structural short pressure. What is more interesting is the broader factor picture — a sector score of 50 and an analyst recommendation differential of 49 both sit near the middle of the distribution, giving bulls and bears little obvious statistical edge.

The analyst data available is stale — the only coverage on record is a Citigroup initiation from February 2026, with a Neutral rating and a $21.80 target. Given the stock now trades at $14.57, a significant gap has opened below that target. However, given the age of the data and the absence of any follow-on coverage, that target carries limited current weight. The broader picture from recent notes is that the stock's growth profile is genuine — return on assets near 22% and a strong financial resilience reading — but momentum has been the persistent drag, with relative strength deeply negative over both three- and six-month windows.

The stock is down 4% on the week and nearly 7% over the past month, closing at $14.57. The most recent earnings history shows a sharp single-day drop of 14% after March results, with a further 11% decline by day five. A new earnings event may have just occurred — the data shows a June 10 event entry — which could prove the more immediate reference point for how the stock behaves from here. How price reacts in the days following that print, and whether analyst coverage is refreshed off the back of it, is the cleaner story to watch than the short positioning, which for now has stepped firmly into the background.