Nine Energy CTB Plunges 67%

Cost to borrow collapsed from 15.37% to 5.00% over seven sessions. Short interest flatlined at 35,514 shares while utilisation eased to 0.5% from a 52-week high of 0.91% hit mid-April. Shares rose 7.2% this week to $9.38 ahead of May 7 earnings.

Price action & positioning

NINE closed Friday at $9.38, up 3.1% on the day and 7.2% over the trailing week. The oilfield services micro-cap lacks market cap data and free float disclosure, limiting ratio analysis.

Short interest & lending

Short interest stood at 35,514 shares on April 23, unchanged for fourteen consecutive sessions. The official FINRA print on April 15 showed 53,811 shares short with 1.04 days to cover — modest absolute exposure.

Cost to borrow dropped 67% week-over-week to 5.00%. The recent history tells a volatility story: CTB spiked to 69.10% on April 3, then whipsawed through a series of intraday extremes — 35.41% on April 6, 25.34% on April 8, 22.34% on April 13, back down to 15.37% on April 16. By April 21 it had halved again to 9.03%, then settled near 5% by week's end. The pattern suggests a brief scramble for borrow that resolved as shares became available or demand dried up.

Utilisation was 0.5% on April 23, down from 0.64% three days earlier and well off the 0.91% 52-week peak recorded April 13. That spike coincided with the highest CTB prints. Since mid-April, utilisation has oscillated between 0.12% and 0.91%, a wide range for such a thinly traded name.

What to watch

Nine Energy reports earnings May 7 at 20:00 UTC. The company last announced results March 4. Historical earnings reactions are not available in the snapshot; this will be the first test of the stock's post-rally positioning. With CTB and utilisation both normalising after a brief squeeze, near-term volatility depends on whether the results reset sentiment or trigger fresh short interest.

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This is not financial advice. ORTEX data is subject to change. Short interest and cost to borrow figures reflect the most recent available estimates.