SHAZ heads into its June 23 earnings event with short interest doubling in under two weeks and the borrow market fully consumed — the clearest tension in the name right now.
The most striking move this week is in short positioning. Estimated short shares jumped 57% in a single session on June 9 and are now up 78% across the week, reaching roughly 995,000 shares. That's more than double the level from a month ago, a 114% increase since mid-May. Free float data needed to calculate SI as a percentage is absent from the snapshot, but the raw trajectory tells its own story: bears are rebuilding aggressively into the print. The ORTEX short score hit 69.8 on June 9, up from 60.2 just two weeks ago — a sustained climb that now ranks the name firmly in bearish territory on the ORTEX scale.
The lending market is fully stretched to match that demand. Every share available in the lending pool is currently lent out — availability has been at its floor for most of the past three weeks, sitting near 91% relative to existing short interest, meaning the pool is essentially one-for-one already borrowed. This has been a persistent condition since late May, when availability briefly touched its 52-week low of 18.9% on May 25 before recovering somewhat. Cost to borrow has eased from peaks above 14% in late April to around 8.4% now, down roughly a third from a month ago — a notable softening even as short demand surges, suggesting brokers found incremental supply rather than shorts backing off. Still, borrow remains meaningfully above zero and the full utilization signal has held for weeks.
Options positioning is shifting in the same cautious direction, though it's early-stage. The put/call ratio climbed to 0.625 on June 9 — the highest reading in the five sessions of available history, up from 0.0 just one week prior. The series is too short to z-score reliably, but the directional move is clear: buyers are adding more put protection relative to calls as the earnings date approaches. The last two earnings events produced a muted one-day move of just 3.4%, but the five-day drift that followed was a strong 22%. The March quarter print was more dramatic — a 27% next-day gain. Bears rebuilding ahead of a catalyst with that kind of vol history is a meaningful signal worth watching.
The Street's view is broadly constructive but dated. Three initiations from Compass Point, Lucid Capital Markets, and Cantor Fitzgerald all landed in April with Buy or Overweight ratings, carrying price targets between $40 and $50. Those targets are now well below the current price of $63.42, meaning the consensus mean of $78 — the only updated figure available — implies upside from here, but the April initiations are already stale relative to where the stock has traded. The stock is up 20% over the past month despite losing 25% across the past week, a volatile chop that complicates any clean price-target framing. The EV/EBITDA multiple of 3.3x has fallen 2.1 points over the past 30 days, and the PE is deeply negative, reflecting a company not yet in profit. Ownership is concentrated — the top three named holders each carry 8% or more of shares, and Millennium Management and Situational Awareness LP both appear as more recent institutional entrants with new or near-new positions.
The June 23 print is therefore the near-term fulcrum: whether the accelerating short build reflects genuine fundamental skepticism or simply tactical positioning ahead of a historically volatile earnings release is what the next two weeks should clarify.
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