9936 heads into its May 15 earnings with short interest building steadily over the past six weeks — the clearest shift in positioning this stock has seen in some time.
Short sellers have been quietly accumulating. SI as a percentage of free float has climbed from under 1% in mid-March to 2.58% at the latest read — a near-tripling in under six weeks. The move accelerated through early April, pushing the reading to its current level. That pace of build is worth watching even if the absolute level remains modest for a Japanese restaurant name.
The lending picture complicates that short thesis. Availability has loosened considerably over the same stretch. Cost to borrow peaked at roughly 1.68% in late March and has since fallen by almost half to 0.84% — a 46% drop over the past month. Borrow availability has also eased: utilization, which briefly hit its 52-week high of 39.3% on April 1, has fallen back sharply to around 16%, leaving ample capacity in the lending pool for new positions. In other words, more shares are being shorted, but borrowing them is getting cheaper and easier — not the setup of a constrained squeeze, more one of orderly accumulation.
The ORTEX short score reinforces the narrative of easing pressure. At 42.4 as of April 28, it has pulled back from a recent intraday peak near 49.7 on April 16 — the highest reading of the trailing two weeks. The score's retreat aligns with the cost-to-borrow decline and the loosening of availability, suggesting the initial urgency behind the short-side move has moderated even as the stock itself drifted lower. The stock closed at ¥2,956, down about 6% over the past month, with only a marginal recovery of 0.2% on the most recent session.
On the ownership side, the register is concentrated and relatively stable. Asahi Group Holdings holds roughly 11.7% — the largest institutional stake — while ARIAKE JAPAN accounts for another 6.3%. Founder-family names (Kato family) collectively hold a meaningful slice, adding a structural floor to the float. Western passive managers including Vanguard and BlackRock have each modestly added shares in the March quarter. None of the top holders have made material changes, and the overall count of 38 reported institutional holders underlines how tightly held this name is.
Valuation context is limited to book and EV/EBITDA metrics in the available data: the EV/EBITDA multiple runs at 9.1x on 2025 figures, with only minor moves over the past week and month. The P/B ratio at 2.4x is similarly steady. ORTEX factor scores flag a strong dividend rank (84th percentile), though the most recent dividend data in the snapshot dates to 2021 and cannot be treated as current. The analyst consensus is a lone hold rating, last updated in early February — too dated to carry weight. Closest correlated peers on the TSE have had a mixed week: 9672 fell 3.8%, 9616 dropped 4.0%, and 6030 lost 5.5%, while 3561 managed a small gain of 0.3% — Ohsho's 1.2% weekly decline sits in the middle of that range, neither notable outperformance nor underperformance.
The next focal point is the May 15 earnings release. Recent earnings reactions have been muted — the stock moved less than 1.5% on the day in each of the last four prints, with five-day reactions similarly contained. The pattern to watch is whether the short-interest build of the past six weeks reflects a specific view on the upcoming results, or simply a slow repositioning that might reverse once the print lands.
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