BNKK is having a rough week — the stock shed 18% to $2.25 and short sellers just doubled their position. The combination of a fresh earnings print, a $100M shelf offering, and a board reshuffle has handed bears a lot to work with.
The short interest story is the headline number here. Estimated short interest more than doubled over the past week, rising 107% to reach 167,790 shares. Over the past month the rise is even sharper — up 129%. In absolute terms the float percentage remains modest at roughly 0.09%, so this is not a crowded short by any conventional measure. But the pace of accumulation is notable. Short sellers have been steadily adding exposure since late April, and the move has accelerated into this week's price weakness.
Borrow conditions tell a more relaxed story than the pace of new shorts might suggest. The cost to borrow has more than halved since early April, falling from a peak near 39% APR to 13.7% today — its lowest point in over six weeks. Availability, while tighter than a month ago, remains manageable. The ORTEX short score has climbed to 56.2 from 42.3 just two weeks ago, its highest recent reading, but that still places it below the danger zone. The overall picture is of a borrow market that has eased considerably even as short interest builds — shorts are getting in cheaper than they were, which reduces friction for continued positioning.
The options market adds a technical curiosity. The put/call ratio ticked up to 0.0114 on May 12, a move that is statistically significant — more than four standard deviations above its 20-day mean of 0.0112. The context matters though: these are very low absolute levels, and the 52-week high on PCR is only 0.507. The z-score spike reflects extremely thin options activity rather than a surge in defensive positioning. It is hard to read a strong bearish signal from the options market here.
The fundamental backdrop explains the selling. On May 13, BNKK reported Q1 earnings with EPS of -$0.23, a meaningful improvement from -$2.69 a year ago. Revenue of $786K was up dramatically from $42K in the prior year period — early-stage growth off a very small base. The company also filed a $100M shelf offering in mid-April, a large capital raise relative to a stock with no reported market cap in the data. That shelf announcement landed on April 17, right around the time cost-to-borrow peaked and short interest began its latest leg higher. A new board chairman, Chris Melton, was appointed effective April 22, adding another variable for investors to assess.
On the ownership side, Mitchell Rudy holds 19.4% of shares and added 31,055 shares at $2.82 in early April. That was a relatively small purchase in dollar terms ($87,575), but it is the most recent insider transaction and comes from the company's single largest holder. The top five holders by name are individuals rather than institutions, suggesting a concentrated and insider-heavy ownership structure. Vanguard holds under 1%.
The prior earnings history is mixed. The April 2 print produced a 13.5% one-day gain, but the five-day return was flat. December 2025 saw a 7.6% one-day drop followed by a 38.6% five-day loss — a significantly negative reaction to what appears to have been a weak print at the time. The pattern is inconsistent, which makes the most recent quarterly release a genuine unknown in terms of market reaction timing.
The week's setup — price down 18%, shorts doubling, borrowing getting cheaper, a shelf offering still digesting — is what to watch as BNKK absorbs the Q1 10-Q filed after today's close.
See the live data behind this article on ORTEX.
Open BNKK on ORTEX →ORTEX Market Intelligence content is generated by AI from a snapshot of ORTEX's proprietary data. Content is informational only and does not constitute investment advice.
