The 10 most shorted ASX stocks plus the biggest risers and fallers – Week 28

Welcome back to the Short Seller Series – A recap of the most heavily shorted stocks on the ASX and those experiencing significant changes to short interest over the past week.

Short selling data is four days behind today's date because reporting is not mandatory until three business days after the trade. The tables below will compare:

• Week-on-week changes between 2 July and 9 July 2024

• Month-on-month changes between 11 June and 9 July 2024

Most Shorted

Interesting takeaways:

• Pilbara Minerals and IDP Education: Remain the two most shorted stocks on the market. The two stocks have retained the top spots since early February.

• Liontown shares have traded around the 90 cent to $1.00 level for the past three weeks. On Tuesday, Citi reiterated a Neutral rating and $1.00 target price, citing "we see a lack of short-term catalysts for Liontown to underperform."

• Flight Centre shares are up almost 20% since early June. Earlier this week, Macquarie retained an Outperform rating and hiked its target price from $23.25 to $26.80. "During the pandemic, FLT streamlined costs and refined its leisure and corporate growth strategies. Consequently, it has emerged a more profitable and scaleable business, and we expect it to see continued market-share wins and thus earnings growth," the report said.

Rising Shorts

Interesting takeaways:

• A broad uptick across several resource stocks, notably coal, palladium and uranium.

• Uranium stocks experienced a broad-based rally on Thursday, 11 July after Kazakhstan announced an unexpected increase in uranium extraction taxes. From 2026, the new mineral extraction tax of up to 18% linked to production and additional 2.5% linked to uranium prices could hinder production from the world's largest uranium producing country. It will be interesting to see if upcoming data shows any signs of short covering.

• As we head into reporting season, its worth noting that in the past 16 reporting seasons, the stocks that missed earnings expectations had higher short interest (2.2%) compared to ones that beat (1.7%), according to the Coppo Report.

Most Covered

Interesting takeaways:

• MMA Offshore was suspended from quotation on 11 July after its $1.1 billion takeover by Singapore's Cyan Renewables was approved by shareholders. There's no reason to short a stock that will soon de-list.

• Nanosonics shares have fallen approximately 25% year-to-date, primarily due to disappointing half-year FY24 results announced in February. The report highlighted lower-than-anticipated revenues, increased costs and a downgraded full-year profit outlook. However, challenging business conditions may be stabilising. On Monday, July 15, the company expected its 2H24 revenue to reach approximately $90.4 million, a 14% increase from the first half. This projection brings the expected full-year revenue to around $170 million, surpassing the consensus estimates of $166.7 million. In response to this positive news, the stock surged 5.0% on Monday to a five-month high.