Short sellers: Lithium shorts won’t back down, banks under pressure, Megaport’s squeeze

Welcome back to the Short Seller Series – where we take a look at some of the most shorted stocks in the ASX and those that have experienced a notable rise and fall in short interest in the past week.

Short selling data is four days behind today's date as reporting is not mandatory until three business days post trade. The data below refers to short interest changes for stocks between Friday, 14 April and Monday, 24 April.

Most Shorted Stocks

Another week of incremental moves for the top short names.

• Top six remain unchanged

• JB Hi-Fi and Jervois Global swapped places

• PointsBet fell from #9 to #11

• Breville fell from #10 to #13

• AMA Group moves into #10

Some other interesting observations:

Megaport’s earnings update: Megaport shares rallied 41.7% on Friday, 28 April after upgrading its FY23-24 guidance. In terms of intraday performance, the stock opened 44.5% higher and gains briefly faded to 34.4%. This means it wasn’t exactly one of those sessions where aggressive short covering propped the stock up intraday. It will be interesting to see if short interest changes when the data comes out on Thursday.

AMA’s quarterly update: AMA shares tanked 34.7% on Monday, 17 April after downgrading its FY23 guidance due to industry-wide labour constraints, higher employee costs and inflation. Shorts were clearly on the money and the stock has hardly bounced. 

Rising Shorts

Shorts continue to stack for Lake Resources: The stock rallied 18.5% on Monday, 17 April after the company successfully produced 2,500 kg of lithium carbonate via a pilot plant. Just two days later, the stock had given back all of those gains. 

Bank of Queensland faces pressure on many fronts: BOQ reported its first-half results on Thursday, 20 April. The bank flagged several headwinds including home loan retention, deposit benefit reversal and liquidity build issues, which impacted its margin outlook. Over the next four sessions, the stock fell 9.1%. Post earnings, the average price target across 14 sell-side ratings was cut by 6.7% to $6.33. 

Falling Shorts

A turning point for St Barbara: St Barbara has entered into an agreement with Genesis Minerals to sell its St Leonora Assets for $600 million. This enables the company to focus on the development of its Canadian Atlantic Operations and Simberi Operations in Papua New Guinea. Shorts interest in St Barbara has not been this low since December 2021. Does this transaction reflect a turnpoint for the embattled gold miner?