Blackstone Exits and Shorts Retreat as Bumble's Takeover Bid Takes Hold

BMBL has settled into a different kind of tension this week: the 137% surge is fading into consolidation at $5.94, shorts are covering at pace, and Blackstone is selling through a pre-arranged plan at prices well below where the stock now trades.

The short interest story has shifted materially since the previous note. Shares short fell 10% in a single session on October 15, dropping to 11.6% of the free float from around 14.5 million shares earlier in the week. Over the past month, short interest is down roughly 19%, a steady unwind from the 16.4 million share peak seen in early September. That retreat looks more like rational cover than a forced squeeze: borrow availability has exploded to 780%, up from roughly 311% at the time of the last note, meaning the lending pool is now very loose relative to what remains shorted. Cost to borrow has jumped to 1.26% from around 0.55% a week ago, a near tripling, but in absolute terms that still represents cheap financing for anyone who wants to maintain a short. The ORTEX short score has dropped to 52.7 from 62.8 just ten days ago, a move that confirms the pressure on short sellers has eased rather than intensified. Options positioning has rotated too: the put/call ratio climbed back to 0.37, about 1.8 standard deviations above its 20-day average of 0.30, a reversal from the extreme call-chasing seen mid-week last week. Traders are now hedging the position rather than pressing it.

The most newsworthy development this week is on the 13D register. Blackstone, which holds an activist Schedule 13D/A filing, cut its stake from 14.1% to 12.0% as of October 14. The sales were executed through BX Buzz ML-1 GP LLC and related entities on October 13, entirely under pre-arranged 10b5-1 plans, at prices around $3.54 per share. That price is roughly 40% below where BMBL closed on Friday. The planned nature of the sales limits the read-through as a negative signal, but the scale is hard to ignore: the combined transactions across the Blackstone entities totalled roughly $9.8 million in a single session. Insider net selling over the past 90 days amounts to approximately $87 million across 26.8 million shares. Whitney Wolfe Herd, who holds a separate 13D/A at 14.7% of the class, made no transactions in the same period. As with all 13D/G disclosures, these stakes are as-last-disclosed around the 5% threshold and holders dropping below 5% are not required to file again.

The Street remains cautious, but UBS moved its target sharply higher on October 14, raising it to $6.05 from $3.00 while keeping a Neutral rating. That revision matters because ORTEX forecasts an 84% probability that BMBL will be deleted from both the Russell 2000 and Russell 3000 following the agreed cash acquisition by Ithaca Holdings. Estimated index deletion dates are around February to March 2027, though those dates are ORTEX estimates, not confirmed by the index provider. The mean analyst price target is $4.18, which sits below the current price and reflects most of the Street's targets being set before UBS's revision. The EV/EBITDA multiple is running at 5.4x, up about 0.09x over the past 30 days on the price move. The PE ratio has expanded to 7.3x, roughly 3.6 turns wider than a month ago. The bull case centres on improving member quality metrics and a women-first model with durable ARPPU, now at $27.55 for the core app, even as paying users fell 17% year on year. The bear case is blunter: Badoo revenue fell 17%, Tech Stack 2.0 is delayed, and execution risk remains high regardless of a potential acquisition close.

The prior note described an extreme call-heavy options setup and a genuine mechanical short squeeze following the 137% weekly move. Both of those dynamics have normalised. Shorts have covered, borrow availability is loose, the put/call ratio is back above its mean, and the stock has given back a fraction of the move to close near $5.94. Peer names closed the week more mixed: MTCH gained 4.5% on the week and YELP added 6.9%, while ANGI and FUBO fell 5.9% and 9.5% respectively, suggesting the bid premium in BMBL is providing relative cushion rather than sector momentum.

The November 5 earnings date is the next hard event. Given the last two prints produced next-day declines of 7% and 11%, the shift toward put hedging in the options market this week is the data point worth tracking into that date.