BSP Borrow Eases but Shorts Rebuild Ahead of November Print

Bending Spoons heads into its November 13 earnings with the borrow market loosening after a month of near-total squeeze, while the stock itself has staged a sharp 39% recovery that leaves most of the Street's price targets trailing the current price.

The lending picture has shifted dramatically over the past month and is the clearest story in the data. Through most of October, availability was essentially zero: from September 21 through October 12, the lending pool was fully exhausted, with availability reading below 1% on virtually every session. That crunch has since eased. Availability is now near 12%, meaning roughly one share remains available for every eight already on loan. Cost to borrow, which spiked as high as 34% in mid-October, has dropped to 12.5%, down more than 20% on the week. Short interest itself pulled back 7.7% over the week to approximately 18.5 million shares, continuing a steady slide from the 21.9 million peak in mid-October. The direction of travel in the lending market is clearly looser, but "looser" is relative: at 12% availability, this borrow market remains tight by most standards. The ORTEX short score of 74.7, while down from 79 ten days ago, still sits well into elevated territory.

The options market is sending a consistently defensive signal. The put/call ratio is running at roughly 2.0, just above its 20-day average of 1.95, and has been above 1.7 for the past three weeks. That level of put-heavy positioning is not a short-term spike but a sustained lean, suggesting investors have been buying downside protection methodically rather than reacting to a single catalyst. The z-score of 0.34 is unremarkable, which means this is normal for BSP right now. Normal for this stock happens to be a put/call ratio that most other software names would flag as bearish.

The Street is modestly behind the tape. The mean analyst price target is $47.67, only about 5% above Friday's close of $45.52, after a 39% one-month rally that has outrun most of the coverage. The most recent substantive move came from B of A Securities in late September, where the firm lowered its target to $36 while maintaining an Underperform rating. That target is now more than 20% below the current price. Wells Fargo sits at the other end with an Overweight and a $48 target, fractionally above the market. JP Morgan holds a Neutral at $38, well below spot. The analyst data becomes stale past mid-September, so the post-rally picture from the broader Street is limited, but the spread between the lowest published target ($36) and the current price illustrates how sharply the stock has moved through consensus.

Ownership gives some context to the low availability figures. The four co-founders hold roughly 51% of shares between them, which compresses the freely tradeable float significantly. Baillie Gifford holds a further 15.2% and filed a 13G in August, a passive stake with no activist intent. Durable Capital holds 7.3%, also 13G. Neither is an activist holder. T. Rowe Price and Capital Research both appear as fresh additions as of September 30, each building new positions. The concentrated insider base is the structural reason the borrow market tightened so severely in October: there are simply fewer shares in circulation, so when short demand rose, availability vanished quickly.

On the alt data side, Wikipedia views for BSP registered an attention z-score of 3.0 against the company's own 90-day history, as of mid-October. There are no measured datasets that have been shown to lead BSP's reported figures, so this is colour on retail interest rather than a signal about the quarter's fundamentals.

Past earnings have been punishing. The August 13 print saw the stock fall 19.7% the following day and a further 18.5% over the subsequent five days. The September 4 event was smaller but still negative, with a 6.3% one-day decline. With the next report on November 13, eleven days away, the combination of a 39% pre-earnings run-up and a track record of double-digit selloffs on results is the tension worth monitoring as the date approaches.