APUS has had a turbulent week — a 60% price spike in three days, a new co-CEO, a major corporate dispute resolved, and short sellers scrambling to add exposure simultaneously.
The catalyst behind the move is corporate, not clinical. On May 4, Apimeds Pharmaceuticals appointed Sungjoon Chae as Co-CEO, effective immediately. The following day the company announced it had settled all outstanding disputes with Inscobee — its parent company — regarding the planned business combination with MindWave Innovations. That settlement cleared a significant overhang. The stock responded sharply, closing at $3.00 on May 5, up nearly 60% on both the day and the week.
The borrowing market has tightened in step with the rally. Cost to borrow has more than doubled over the past week, rising 131% to 13.93% — a meaningful jump for a micro-cap name. Short interest also climbed, adding roughly 29% in a week to around 120,840 shares. Availability has tightened as a result, with borrow utilisation now running at 59.5% of the pool — up from around 54-56% across most of April, though still well below the 52-week peak of 75.9%. The lending market is firmer than it was, but not yet at a critical pinch point.
The backdrop from an insider perspective is worth noting, even if the data is now roughly a year old. In May 2025, the Executive Chairman made two small open-market purchases totalling around 27,500 shares at prices between $1.82 and $1.86. More notably, Inscobee — the parent company — bought 500,000 shares at $4.00 in a single transaction, a $2 million commitment at a price above where the stock is trading today. That context is relevant: the entity now settling its dispute with the company was also its largest insider buyer at higher prices just a year ago.
The fundamental picture remains challenging. Q4 EPS came in at -$0.80, worse than the -$0.50 loss reported a year earlier, a reminder that the company is still burning cash with no near-term earnings path evident. There is no analyst coverage in the data and no earnings event on the calendar. This is entirely a news-and-positioning story at present.
What to watch next is whether the Inscobee settlement and the MindWave combination actually close — and whether that event is enough to sustain the stock at current levels or attracts a fresh wave of short interest as the borrowed shares outstanding remain the highest they have been since early April.
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