Eastman Kodak heads into its August 7 earnings release with short sellers holding a meaningful but stable position — and the borrow market offering no squeeze signal to complicate either side's calculus.
Short interest is the central tension here. At 7% of free float, the bear camp is real. What's notable is the trajectory: short positions climbed roughly 28% over the past month, a substantial build. But the pace has stalled. Over the past week, short interest dipped fractionally — just 0.7% — suggesting the recent build is consolidating rather than accelerating into the print. The borrow market reinforces that read. Cost to borrow has eased about 5% on the week and sits below 0.5%, a low level that signals no stress in sourcing shares to short. Availability is wide open at over 720% — meaning roughly seven shares are available to lend for every one already borrowed — well above any level that would imply squeeze risk. On the price side, the stock has run 7.7% on the week and 5.6% on the day, pushing to $8.93. That recent strength has not, however, prompted a fresh wave of short-selling.
Options positioning is conspicuously unbothered by all of this. The put/call ratio of 0.20 is essentially flat against its 20-day average of 0.20 — a z-score of just 0.16 — indicating options traders are neither hedging aggressively nor piling into calls. The PCR has, in fact, drifted up modestly from June lows near 0.15 toward its current range, but nowhere near the 52-week high of 0.46 that would suggest defensive positioning. Calls remain dominant in the open-interest mix, an ongoing structural tilt for a stock that has historically attracted retail interest.
The ownership picture adds a layer of conviction on the long side. B. Golisano holds 15.5% of shares and has not moved his position. BlackRock added roughly 845,000 shares in the most recent reported quarter. Vanguard entities initiated new positions. These are passive and index-oriented flows in some cases, but the direction is net accumulative among the largest holders. The one prior earnings reaction on record showed the stock gaining 2% on the day and 8.2% over the following five sessions after the May 2026 print — a constructive precedent, though the sample is thin.
The ORTEX short score has ticked steadily higher over the past two weeks, from 54.6 to 56.6, a modest but consistent drift that reflects growing short-side interest even as the actual share count has plateaued. Overall, positioning looks asymmetric rather than crowded: short interest is elevated and has been building on a monthly basis, but the lending market is relaxed and options traders are not pressing the bear case — leaving the earnings print to resolve whether the recent one-month short build was well-timed or premature.
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Open KODK on ORTEX →ORTEX Market Intelligence content is generated by AI from a snapshot of ORTEX's proprietary data. Content is informational only and does not constitute investment advice.
