Honda Motor Co. heads into its May 14 earnings report with bearish positioning accelerating on multiple fronts — shorts rebuilding, options traders at their most defensive in a year, and borrow costs doubling in a week.
The short-side activity this week is impossible to ignore. Estimated short interest jumped 44% over the past seven days, reaching roughly 2.94 million shares by April 28. The move follows a quieter March — shorts had gradually trimmed from ~2.5 million shares in late March down through early April — making this week's rebuild the most aggressive accumulation in the 30-day window. Cost to borrow has tracked the same direction, climbing from 1.24% on April 21 to 2.66% by April 28, a rise of more than 115% in seven trading sessions. That said, borrow conditions remain far from extreme in absolute terms: the cost peaked near 14% as recently as March 30 before collapsing through mid-April, suggesting this week's move is a partial re-engagement rather than a full short squeeze setup. Availability has tightened meaningfully, though at roughly 49% it still leaves room for new shorts to enter the lending market without fighting for stock.
Options traders are equally guarded. The put/call ratio has pushed to 1.056 — essentially the highest level of the past year, with the 52-week high recorded at 1.063 just one session earlier on April 23. That reading is about 1.3 standard deviations above the 20-day average of 0.97, placing it at the defensive end of recent history. The shift has been sharp: through most of March and into early April, the PCR sat comfortably below 0.97, with several sessions below 0.86. The flip above 1.0 coincides almost exactly with the short interest rebuild, and both moves are happening with the May 14 print looming on the calendar.
The valuation case for bulls is genuinely cheap on paper. Price-to-book is running at just 0.48, and EV/EBITDA has compressed roughly 2 turns over the past month to sit near 14.9. The dividend score ranks in the 85th percentile, a notable bright spot. Against that, the ORTEX short score of 45 (on a 0-100 scale where higher signals more bearish positioning pressure) has climbed quickly from the low-30s seen mid-April, and the stock is off about 1.4% on the month at $24.00. The dominant macro narrative across the auto sector is US tariffs, which weighed on peer names throughout April — General Motors and Ford both closed the month in the red year-to-date, down 4% and 5.5% respectively. The most recent analyst action on Honda of any substance was Macquarie's downgrade to Neutral in June 2025; formal coverage coverage on the US-listed ADR appears sparse, and any older target data should be treated as dated.
The earnings history adds a cautionary frame. The March 12 report — the most recent comparable — produced a 6.4% one-day decline, followed by a further drop to -10.6% by the five-day mark. The February 10 print went the other way, up 2% on the day, though it still faded to a small loss by five days out. The pattern suggests the market has a habit of initially absorbing the numbers and then reassessing: two of three recent events ended the week lower than the day-one read.
With the short score rising, borrow costs doubling in a week, puts crowding toward their highest relative weight in a year, and the May 14 print two weeks away, the main question is whether the tariff and earnings discount already in the price is sufficient — or whether this week's positioning rebuild signals the market sees further room to re-rate.
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