CXAI headed into its Q1 earnings release with one of the sharpest short-interest buildups of the year — and the results just landed, with the company topping both revenue and EPS estimates.
Short sellers moved decisively into this stock in the days before today's print. Short interest as a percentage of free float climbed from roughly 3.2% a week ago to 5.4% on May 12 — a 69% jump in a single week. Zoom out to a month and the picture is starker: SI has risen more than 200% since early April, when the free-float short position was barely 0.7%. That is a rapid, concentrated build, not a gradual drift.
The borrow market tells a tighter story. Availability has eased somewhat from the most stressed levels seen in late April and early May, when readings hit 100% utilisation on multiple sessions — meaning every share in the lending pool was already lent out. By May 12 that had loosened to 82.6%, with the cost to borrow settling near 7.6% APR after spiking above 11.5% on May 4. That spike and retreat suggests the borrow squeeze has partially unwound, but conditions remain meaningfully tighter than they were a month ago when cost to borrow ran above 12% from a different direction — sustained high SI. The ORTEX short score of 58.2 places the stock in the more closely watched segment of the market, with a utilisation rank in the 7th percentile, reflecting how tight the lending pool has been relative to peers.
Options positioning has also shifted. The put/call ratio reached 0.19 on May 12 — its highest reading of the past 52 weeks and well above its 20-day average of 0.13. The z-score of 1.1 is not extreme, but the directional move is clear: demand for downside protection jumped in the week leading into today's results, rising steadily from below 0.16 at the end of April.
The results themselves provided the first counter to that defensive lean. CXApp reported Q1 EPS of -$0.09, beating the -$0.11 estimate, on revenue of $950,000 against an $900,000 estimate. Alongside the numbers, the company announced over $5 million in total contract value from three multi-year enterprise agreements — a signal on the commercial pipeline that may not have been fully priced in. The prior earnings print, reported on March 31, triggered a -10.3% one-day move and a -5.1% five-day move, so the bar for a positive reaction was set by a recent negative reaction cycle.
The stock had already reflected a great deal of pessimism heading in — down 13% on the week and 24.5% over the past month to $0.1374. Close peers are similarly bruised. BMNR fell 6.2% on the week and BMR dropped 7.7%, while ANY managed a 23% weekly gain — a reminder that the micro-cap end of the market remains bifurcated between names with near-term catalysts and those without. The next confirmed earnings event for CXAI is June 16, but the immediate focus will be on whether today's beat and the $5 million contract announcement are enough to reverse the short-seller conviction that built so aggressively in recent sessions.
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