BMNR Shorts Ease as Earnings Loom

Bitmine Immersion Technologies heads into its November 20 earnings with short interest falling sharply from recent highs, borrow conditions loose, and options traders leaning bullish relative to recent norms.

The most striking development in the positioning data is how dramatically short interest has contracted over the past month. At 12.2% of the free float, the short position is real and meaningful. But it has fallen 23% over the past 30 days, with the heaviest covering concentrated in the first two weeks of October, when shares outstanding on loan dropped from roughly 47 million to 31 million. That is a large and rapid unwinding. The more recent pace of covering has slowed, with shares short nearly flat on the week at 34.7 million, suggesting the most aggressive bears have already moved.

Borrow conditions offer no particular signal of stress. The cost to borrow has crept up 13% on the week but remains negligible at 0.42%. More importantly, availability is exceptionally loose, running at 360% of short interest, meaning roughly 334 million shares remain available to lend against around 35 million already borrowed. The lending market is not signalling any squeeze pressure. The 52-week tightest point for availability was around 49%, a figure the stock is nowhere near today. Options positioning echoes the same relaxed tone. The put/call ratio of 0.43 is slightly below its 20-day average of 0.46 and roughly 0.7 standard deviations below the mean, putting it closer to the more call-heavy end of the past year's range (52-week low: 0.32) than the defensive end (52-week high: 0.62).

The Street picture is harder to interpret with confidence. BMNR's trailing P/E has expanded to 30x, up from around 20x a month ago, as the stock has pulled back 22% over the past month to close at $20.53. The EPS surprise factor score ranks in just the 11th percentile, a weak track record of beating estimates that may explain why bulls are not pushing the multiple aggressively higher even after a month of price weakness. The short score of 45 is middling, ranking in the 27th percentile of its universe, consistent with the picture of a stock where short interest is elevated but not at an extreme. Among peers, MSTR fell 4.1% on the week and BTCS dropped 8.8%, while BMNR itself lost 5%. The sector-wide weakness appears to reflect macro pressure on crypto-linked names rather than any BMNR-specific development.

The activist register adds an interesting historical layer. MOZAYYX UGP, LLC filed a Schedule 13D in July 2025, declaring a 9.99% stake with activist intent. Peter Thiel, who had also filed at the same time with 9.1% of the class, subsequently reduced his position to 0.9% by November 2025. That is a sharp exit by a prominent investor and was material news when it occurred, though the filing is now almost a year old. The standard caveat applies: Schedule 13D/G disclosures are event-driven around the 5% threshold, and holders who drop below 5% are under no obligation to file again, so current positions may differ materially from what is on record.

On the institutional side, the most recent quarter saw significant buying from several passive managers. BlackRock added 16.2 million shares to its position, State Street added 6.4 million, and Geode added 4.4 million, all reported as of September 30. These look primarily like index-related flows rather than active conviction bets.

Earnings on November 20 are the next pivot. The two most recent quarterly results produced next-day gains of roughly 8% each time, though both occasions also showed limited follow-through over the subsequent five-day window on one of the two. The setup heading into the print, loose borrow, modest options hedging, and a sharply reduced short base, is less charged than it was six weeks ago. What to watch next is whether short interest stabilises or begins rebuilding into the print, and whether the EPS surprise track record improves enough to close the gap with a P/E that has expanded meaningfully even as the stock has fallen.