Short sellers retreat from BP into Tuesday's Q1 report. The energy major saw shares short fall 4.8% over the past week to 9.2 million, while cost to borrow collapsed 84% to just 0.067%.
Short interest stands at 9.2 million shares as of April 23. That's down nearly 5% over the past week. The one-month trend shows a 13.3% increase, though recent days have seen consistent unwinding. Days to cover sits at 1.0 according to the latest FINRA data from April 15. Cost to borrow has plunged to 0.067%, down from 0.42% a week ago. Utilization is minimal at 3.78%, well off the 52-week high of 31.82%. Borrowing shares to short BP is easy and cheap right now.
The put-call ratio closed at 0.52 on April 24. That's above the 20-day mean of 0.50, registering a z-score of +0.84. The PCR sits comfortably within its 52-week range of 0.43 to 0.72. Options traders show modest defensive positioning but no extreme skew.
Scotiabank's Paul Cheng raised his target to $58 from $41 on April 22, maintaining Sector Outperform. UBS upgraded to Buy from Neutral on April 15. Wells Fargo lifted its price target to $54 from $39 earlier in the month, keeping Equal-Weight. HSBC upgraded from Reduce to Hold and raised its target to $45.30 from $35.10 on March 20. Piper Sandler's Ryan Todd has nudged his neutral-rated target to $47. The average analyst target of $36.96 sits well below the current $46.25 close, though that consensus data is stale from August 2025. Recent firm-level moves have been constructive.
BP trades at 10.2× earnings, down 1.5 turns over the past month. Price-to-book sits at 1.67, off 0.16 over 30 days. EV/EBITDA has compressed to 18.2×, down 2.1 turns. The stock ranks in the 87th percentile on dividend score and 91st percentile on short score. Earnings yield and momentum ML ranks are unavailable.
Insiders sold $1.06 million net over the past 90 days, led by executive sales in March. Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan Trust Fund holds 34.5 million shares, unchanged from year-end. Morgan Stanley trimmed its position by 2.4 million shares. Renaissance Technologies added 5.4 million shares in Q4. Hartford Funds added 1.7 million shares as of February 28.
BP last reported on March 4, February 10 (twice), and prior quarterly cycles. Historical reaction patterns are not detailed in the snapshot.
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