BBD heads into its Q1 2026 print with short sellers rapidly covering — making this less a squeeze story and more a question of whether earnings can sustain the rally.
The most striking signal in the data is the collapse in short interest. Estimated short shares fell roughly 75% between early April and late April, dropping from above 40 million to around 9 million. That unwind was dramatic. It coincided with a sharp easing in borrow cost — cost to borrow spiked above 8% in early April during the peak short interest episode, then fell all the way back to 0.6%. Availability has opened up substantially since then, with the lending pool far less stressed than it was a month ago. The result: bears have largely walked away from the trade ahead of the print. A modest uptick of about 19% in short shares over the last two days adds a small wrinkle, but the level is a fraction of where it was in early April.
Options positioning is modestly bullish, though not aggressively so. The put/call ratio is running just below its 20-day average at 0.76, roughly 1.3 standard deviations on the call-heavy side. That is the least defensive options positioning has been in months, suggesting investors buying into the recent price momentum rather than hedging against a miss. The stock has gained 5.5% over the past month and is up more than 2% on the week, reaching $3.86. Historical earnings reactions offer a mixed reference: the last print, on March 31, produced a 6.6% gain on the day. The one before that added 1.6% on the day but faded 4.8% over the following five days.
The analyst picture is stale. The most recent changes in the data are from May 2025 — Citigroup upgraded to Buy — and January 2025, when HSBC also moved to Buy. Goldman Sachs lowered its target to $2.30 in January 2025 while maintaining Buy. At the current price of $3.86, both Goldman's $2.30 and HSBC's $2.80 targets appear well below where the stock trades; these figures are over a year old and should be treated as dated reference points rather than current views. The formal consensus, struck in early March 2026, shows only Hold ratings on record, with no Buy count registered — a mismatch with the recent upgrades that likely reflects incomplete data. Valuation is undemanding: BBD trades at a price-to-earnings multiple of roughly 7.8x and a price-to-book of 1.1x. The dividend score ranks in the 81st percentile, consistent with Bradesco's role as a capital-return vehicle for income-oriented EM investors.
Today's print tests whether Bradesco's operational recovery — net income consensus of roughly $1.4 billion for the quarter — is durable enough to justify a stock that has more than reclaimed what it lost in the April sell-off, even as the short interest that once pressed it hard has almost entirely disappeared.
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