Co-Diagnostics heads into its May 14 earnings report with its lending market under the most stress it has seen in months — and the short score to match.
The borrow market tells the sharpest story. Cost to borrow has jumped to 77.2% annualised, more than triple where it was a week ago and nearly four times the month-ago level. That spike followed a 333% surge in estimated short interest over the past week alone, with shares short now running at roughly 0.46% of the float. The absolute level is modest, but the velocity of the move is not. The ORTEX short score has climbed to 72.7, up from 45.9 at the start of the month — a near-doubling in under two weeks — reflecting the combined pressure of new short positioning and tightening borrow supply.
Price action complicates the picture. The stock rallied 26% over the past month to close at $1.72, then gave back nearly 10% in the most recent session alone. That one-day reversal, on top of a week that still shows an 8% gain, points to thin-float volatility rather than any decisive directional conviction. The RSI14 is deeply oversold at 23, which on a micro-cap trading below $5m in market cap can as easily reflect illiquidity as genuine capitulation. The stock is down 53% year-to-date, so the recent bounce has barely dented the longer-run damage.
Options traders are not signalling particular alarm. The put/call ratio of 0.05 is slightly below its 20-day average, indicating that options positioning is actually tilted toward calls rather than hedged for downside. That divergence from the borrow market is notable — short sellers are paying up to borrow shares at the same moment that the options market is not building meaningful put protection. One plausible read: the short-side pressure is driven by a small number of participants taking specific views on the print, not broad-based defensive hedging.
The fundamental backdrop keeps the stakes high. Estimated revenue is running at roughly $576,000 while the operating cash burn is approximately $30m, leaving the company in deeply negative territory on net income. BNY Asset Management disclosed a large position of 137,000 shares — most of it a new addition — in the quarter ended March 31, making it the largest institutional holder by some distance. Whether that position reflects conviction in a turnaround or is incidental is unclear from the filing alone.
The print is therefore less about whether Co-Diagnostics can meet a specific earnings target and more about whether management can articulate a credible path to reducing the cash burn at a pace that justifies the stock's recent move.
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