BOH shorts hold firm as options turn cautious after earnings

Bank of Hawaii Corporation heads into the final week of April with an unusual combination: a board of directors that just bought stock in unison, options traders turning more defensive, and short sellers who barely moved despite a post-earnings dip.

The insider signal is the most eye-catching. On April 24, ten members of the board — including the Non-Executive Vice Chairman and multiple independent directors — each acquired shares at $77.08. Nine bought 844 shares apiece; one director, Raymond Vara, took 1,688. The purchases were uniform enough to look coordinated, likely tied to a director compensation programme rather than opportunistic buying. Still, net insider acquisitions across the last 90 days total roughly 128,000 shares worth nearly $9.75 million, and the cluster of on-market buys the day after earnings is a small signal that insiders are comfortable near current prices.

Options positioning tells a more cautious story. The put/call ratio has risen to 0.56, roughly two standard deviations above its 20-day mean of 0.47. That is the most defensive options skew BOH has seen in recent months. The move started mid-April, around the time of the quarterly results on April 20, when the stock fell 2.9% on the day and ended the week down 1.7%. The options market has not unwound that caution — if anything, it has extended it into this week.

Short interest is elevated but has been stable rather than building. The float short is running at around 8.5% — up sharply from roughly 7.5% at the start of April following a visible step-up around April 10 — but has nudged only fractionally in either direction since then. Borrowing costs have actually eased, down to 0.38% from above 0.64% in mid-April, and availability is broadly comfortable. That combination points to an established short book rather than fresh aggressive positioning: bears built in early April and have largely held pat since.

Analysts moved in a consistent direction after results. Stephens, Keefe Bruyette & Woods, and DA Davidson all raised their price targets on April 21, keeping their existing ratings intact. KBW's target of $95 is the most bullish on the street; DA Davidson held at Neutral with an $82 target. Piper Sandler had cut its target to $78 from $84 at the start of the month, just before the print, and that now sits below the current price of $77.91. The mean analyst target of $85.33 implies roughly 10% upside from here. The bull case rests on NII growth and deposit momentum; the bear case centres on the HFI loan book contracting 3.2% against expectations of growth, and the risk that falling Treasury yields continue to compress margins on reinvested cash flows. Valuation is undemanding — the stock trades at a P/E of roughly 12.3x and 1.83x book, both up modestly over the past month as the stock recovered 7% from its April trough.

Institutional ownership is broad and passive-heavy — BlackRock and Vanguard together hold more than a quarter of shares. Among the more active names, American Century added 200,000 shares in Q1 while Balyasny trimmed around 318,000, a divergence worth watching in the next 13F cycle. Peer regional banks were mixed on the week: FFBC gained 5.4% while FULT slipped 0.6%, leaving BOH's flat weekly performance roughly in the middle of the group. The next earnings date has not been announced, making the options defensive posture — and whether it fades or deepens — the clearest near-term indicator of how the market is reading the Q1 miss on loans.