Bogota Financial Corp. enters today's earnings announcement with shorts already in retreat — and the Q1 numbers just released appear to validate the exit.
Short sellers had been rapidly unwinding positions heading into the print. Estimated short interest fell 27.8% in a single week to just 0.098% of the free float — a tiny fraction by any measure. That follows a sharp build-up through mid-to-late April, when shares short nearly doubled from early-April lows. The reversal gathered pace from April 27 onward, suggesting some participants were closing out before the results rather than pressing into them. Borrow costs remain modest at 1.28% APR, and availability is not a constraint, confirming this is a voluntary unwind rather than a squeeze.
The Q1 results themselves give the covering shorts little reason for regret. Revenue came in at $4.748M, up from $4.483M a year ago. EPS held steady at $0.06. That follows a strong Q4 2025 turnaround, when the New Jersey community bank swung from a net loss of $0.93M to net income of $0.68M year-over-year, and full-year 2025 net interest income reached $15.47M — nearly 47% above the prior year. The trajectory reflects the bank's ongoing benefit from a higher-rate environment and balance-sheet repositioning since its 2022 mutual-to-stock conversion.
Ownership tells a structural story. Bogota Financial, MHC — the mutual holding company — holds 67.7% of shares, leaving a genuinely thin public float. Independent director John Masterson has been a consistent open-market buyer, accumulating shares in December 2025 at prices between $8.21 and $8.40, adding to purchases made throughout 2024 and 2025. His total disclosed stake now approaches 1.47% of shares outstanding. That pattern of director buying at or below current prices — $8.39 as of yesterday's close — provides a consistent backdrop of insider confidence, even as the stock has slipped 4.1% over the past month.
The ORTEX short score has eased to 29.9 from a recent peak near 33, tracking the covering trend. With short interest negligible, the lending market loose, and the Q1 print now in hand, the question this report poses is whether the modest EPS and revenue improvement is enough to sustain the stock's recovery from multi-week lows — or whether thin float and limited analyst coverage leave BSBK trading on its own quiet terms, as it usually does.
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