Citron Research is back with another bold call, and this time it's putting all its chips on one specific player in the non-prime lending space. The firm reiterated its bullish stance on Credit Acceptance Corp (CACC) Friday, maintaining a $714 fair value target and declaring it the only lender in its category worth owning.

Writing on X, Citron said critics have the comparison to its Canadian competitor, goeasy, completely backwards. In fact, Citron argues that goeasy's recent troubles are the perfect case study for why CACC's model works.

"goeasy just handed us the best proof yet of why CACC is the only non-prime lender worth owning," Citron posted.

The Proof Is in the (Bad) Numbers

Andrew Left's Citron pointed directly to goeasy's recent results as the contrast it needed. The firm highlighted a rough quarter for the Canadian lender, citing $330 million in quarterly charge-offs, an emergency restructuring, and a collapse in its merchant channel.

Citron is waiting on an 8-K filing that it says will disclose the settlement details, but the damage is already apparent. "That's what non-prime lending looks like without CACC's dealer-first structure, 30-year collections infrastructure, and pool-level loss pricing built in from day one," Citron wrote. In other words, when you lend to people with shaky credit, you need a fortress of a business model. Citron says CACC has it; others don't.

Discipline Over Growth

So what's the secret sauce? According to Citron, it's all about structural discipline, not chasing growth for growth's sake. While goeasy expanded into new areas like powersports dealerships, CACC has stayed focused on its core auto lending business. The company has operated through every credit cycle since 1972 without pivoting its model.

"CACC doesn't chase volume. It doesn't need to," Citron wrote. This isn't a growth-at-all-costs story; it's a profitability-and-survival story. The firm also highlighted CACC's aggressive buyback program as a sign of confidence and capital discipline. The company has retired 61% of its float since 2011 and repurchased 12.6% of the entire company in 2025 alone. That's a management team putting its money where its mouth is.

The Shorts Are Still Lurking

It's not all smooth sailing, of course. Short interest in CACC did decline in the latest reporting period, dropping from 1.18 million to 1.10 million shares. But short sellers still hold a significant 30% of the company's publicly available float. At the current average daily volume, it would take about 5.3 days for all those short sellers to buy back their shares without pushing the stock price sharply higher. That's a lot of potential buying pressure if the shorts get squeezed, but it's also a sign that a sizable chunk of the market still doubts the thesis.

As for the stock price, Credit Acceptance shares were down 6.54% at $461.68 at the time of publication on Friday. That's a fair bit below Citron's $714 target, suggesting the firm sees a lot of room to run if its analysis is correct.