BCH Heads Into August Print With Bulls Firmly in Control

Banco de Chile reports its next earnings on August 6 with the positioning story having shifted materially since the July 31 print — shorts are near multi-month lows, borrow conditions remain relaxed, and options hedging has retreated from its late-July peak.

The lending market has eased further since the prior articles documented the short retreat. Availability has expanded to 294%, nearly double where it sat at the end of July when it registered around 148%. That means roughly three shares are available to lend for every one currently borrowed — a genuinely uncrowded borrow pool. Cost to borrow ticked up modestly to 1.59% from 0.90% a week ago, but remains well below the 1.90%–2.0% range that prevailed through early July. Short interest has continued its downward path, falling another 15% over the past week to around 730,000 shares, extending a decline that has now erased roughly 27% of positions over the past month. The short score has also dropped to 40.5 from 47.6 just a week ago — a meaningful move toward neutral territory.

Options have normalised after the defensive spike flagged in the July 28 article. The put/call ratio has retreated to 0.106, close to its 20-day average of 0.082 and just 0.56 standard deviations above the mean. The 52-week high on the PCR is a striking 52.7, which contextualises how calm the current reading actually is. BCH options remain overwhelmingly call-dominated. Whatever hedging demand appeared ahead of the July 31 print has largely dissipated.

The fundamental picture carries its own tensions. Factor scores paint an unusually strong setup: EPS surprise ranks in the 95th percentile, the 12-month forward EPS growth trajectory scores at the top of the universe, and the analyst recommendation differential hits the 97th percentile. The P/E has expanded to 13.8x and price-to-book to 2.98x — both up meaningfully over the past month — so the stock is no longer cheap on a relative basis after climbing 4% over the past month to $41.35. Street coverage remains cautious: UBS cut its target from $48 to $39 in May while holding Neutral, and both JPMorgan and Goldman have maintained Neutral ratings through multiple target increases. The consensus price target from those recent actions sits around $36–$39, modestly below the current price — a mild headwind from a valuation standpoint. The formal consensus data in the system is stale and should be disregarded in favour of those individual recent moves.

The August 6 print will therefore test whether BCH's strong earnings momentum — backed by near-top-percentile EPS surprise history — can justify a valuation that has re-rated higher even as the Street holds a cautious stance and positions light into the event.