BKKT heads into its May 12 earnings release with short sellers deeply entrenched and options traders leaning bullish — a split that makes the positioning story more interesting than usual.
Short interest is the dominant feature of this setup. Bears hold 18.1% of the free float — a meaningful and persistent position that has barely budged over the past month, inching up just over 4%. The ORTEX short score of 71.2 ranks in the bottom 4th percentile of the universe, flagging this as one of the most heavily monitored names from a short-selling perspective. Days to cover runs at 4.3, meaning shorts would need more than four full trading days of average volume to unwind. Borrow availability has tightened over the past week — the lending pool is running at roughly 28% unused capacity, down sharply from the 52-week high near 92% — though cost to borrow remains modest at 1.71%, suggesting no acute squeeze pressure yet.
Options traders are telling the opposite story. The put/call ratio has dropped to 0.08, more than 1.5 standard deviations below its 20-day average of 0.10 — the lowest defensive positioning seen in months. That reading is emphatically bullish relative to recent history, and it aligns with the price action: BKKT has gained 22% over the past month and 11% in the past week alone, closing at $9.92 on Monday. Peers have been broadly supportive, with COIN up 5% on the week and adding 4.6%, though crypto-adjacent names like AIFC and HODL have run far harder — suggesting BKKT's rally has lagged the wilder end of its peer group.
The bull and bear debate around Bakkt centres on one question: can the company actually get to profitability? Bulls point to significant operating expense cuts and new growth verticals as a path to a first-half 2026 inflection, with analysts at Clear Street and Benchmark maintaining Buy ratings despite both cutting their targets sharply in March — Clear Street from $39 to $21, Benchmark from $40 to $22. That puts the consensus target near $22, well above the current price, though those notes are nearly two months old and the underlying targets reflect a much higher entry point than the stock has traded at recently. Bears counter that any prolonged crypto weakness hits transaction volumes directly, and integration delays with enterprise clients remain a live risk in a trust-sensitive business. The EPS surprise factor score ranks in the 98th percentile — the company has a strong track record of beating estimates — but that history includes a 6% single-day drop and a 7.6% five-day decline after the most recent comparable event in April, a reminder that beats alone do not guarantee a positive market reaction.
The ownership structure adds one further wrinkle. Akshay Naheta holds 29.5% of shares, having added nearly 8.8 million shares in the most recent filing period — a concentrated and recently expanded insider-adjacent position that could amplify any directional move. Meanwhile, C-suite insiders sold small lots across the CFO, COO, and General Counsel on April 28, though the values involved — all under $45,000 — are too modest to read as a directional signal.
The print will ultimately test whether Bakkt's cost-cutting and revenue diversification story has translated into tangible progress toward that profitability milestone, against a backdrop where short sellers remain heavily committed and the options market is, for now, betting they are wrong.
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