KXIN Borrow Costs Ease as Short Interest Rebuilds

Kaixin Holdings enters the week with a striking divergence: short interest jumped 61% in a single session on May 7, yet the cost to borrow that stock has dropped nearly in half from its peak just weeks ago.

The borrow story is the most instructive angle here. Cost to borrow touched an extreme around 255% APR in late March — a level that made establishing or maintaining a short position genuinely punishing. Since then it has fallen sharply, hitting roughly 120% by May 7. That is still well into hard-to-borrow territory by any standard, but the direction matters: cheaper borrows lower the barrier for new short positions, and the 61% single-day spike in estimated short shares is consistent with fresh supply entering the lending market at improved rates. Availability, measured as the proportion of the lending pool still unused, is modest but not exhausted — the 52-week low was full utilization at 100%, and current levels are well off that floor. The borrow market is tight, but no longer at breaking point.

Short interest itself remains small relative to the float. At roughly 1.7% of the free float on May 7 — up from around 1.1% mid-week — the absolute positioning is not crowded. The day-to-day swings in the share count look large in percentage terms, but the underlying numbers are tiny: we are talking about tens of thousands of shares in a stock with a float of roughly 1.4 million. Small flows can move the percentage reading dramatically. The 30-day trend is actually lower, with SI down about 29% from a month ago when it was closer to 2.3% of the float in late March. The rebuild this week represents a partial reversal of that decline, not a new extreme.

The ORTEX short score climbed to 59.6 on May 7, up from a mid-week low of 45.8 on May 4. That is meaningful directional movement — the score briefly dipped to its lowest reading of the recent range before snapping back. The days-to-cover rank (69th percentile) and a dividend score of 25 round out a picture of a name where the short community is moderately present but not dominant. Valuation data is limited and stale, and institutional ownership is thin — Morgan Stanley holds a negligible stake, with two named individual holders accounting for the bulk of disclosed positions. With no meaningful analyst coverage and no recent institutional flow data worth citing, there is no Street signal to frame.

Price action adds context without clarifying direction. The stock is down 22% over the past month, closing at $4.53 on May 8 after a modest 0.7% gain on the day. The one-week move is nearly flat. The two most recent earnings events produced contrasting outcomes: the April 15 release was followed by a 2.9% drop the next day and a 6% loss over five days, while the April 7 event — an unscheduled filing — saw the stock gain 0.8% the day after and nearly 10% over the following week. The next scheduled earnings date is June 12.

The key tension to watch into June is whether the recent easing in borrow costs continues, which would further lower the friction for short sellers in a name that has already shed a fifth of its value over the past month.