Alkami Technology's most compelling story right now is not in the options market or the borrow rate — it is in the register of a single institutional buyer that has spent over $127 million accumulating shares across the past three months.
General Atlantic, already the largest shareholder with an 18% stake, has been buying aggressively. The private equity firm made six separate open-market purchases between May 4 and May 14, picking up roughly 4 million shares at prices between $16.49 and $16.92 for a combined outlay of around $67.6 million. That follows two more tranches in early March near $18. Net insider buying over the past 90 days amounts to 7.4 million shares worth $127.8 million — a remarkable concentration of conviction from a single counterparty. A director, Joseph Payne, also added 5,500 shares in March alongside General Atlantic's buying cluster, though the size is symbolic next to the main event.
The borrow market tells a quieter story than the buying flow might suggest. Short interest has fallen 13% over the past month to 6.96% of free float — down from a peak near 9.1% in late April — as shorts have covered in a sustained move that accelerated after May 8. Availability is relatively comfortable at 88%, well above the recent tight reading of 60% hit on May 13, and borrowing costs are unremarkable at 0.78% annualised. The ORTEX short score of 68 is elevated, placing ALKT in the bottom 6th percentile by that measure within its universe, but the direction of travel in actual short positions is clearly downward.
Options positioning has nudged more cautious than usual. The put/call ratio is running at 0.63, roughly 1.8 standard deviations above its 20-day average of 0.51. That is a mild defensive tilt but far from extreme, and it sits well below the highs above 1.3 seen in mid-April during a spell of broader market stress. The next earnings date is July 29, leaving roughly nine weeks for positioning to evolve.
The analyst community has been in a prolonged repricing cycle. Most bellwether moves go back to February, when JP Morgan cut its target from $38 to $22 while keeping an Overweight rating, and Needham trimmed from $32 to $22 at Buy. The most recent action from Citizens on April 30 lowered the target further to $23 from $28, maintaining an Outperform. The consensus mean price target of $21.67 implies around 29% upside from current levels — a meaningful gap, though the direction of revisions has been uniformly downward. Bulls point to sticky SaaS subscription revenues and what management has described as intensifying demand from community banks needing to compete digitally with larger institutions. Bears flag persistent shareholder pressure from activist Jana Partners, which still holds 5% and trimmed slightly in early May, as well as ongoing uncertainty about whether the company remains an independent entity.
Among correlated peers this week, ALKT was an outlier to the upside. QTWO dropped 3.1% and TEAM fell 5%, while WDAY shed 3.8%. ALKT gained 0.24%, effectively flat but resilient relative to the software peer group's weakness. Valuation multiples — the EV/EBITDA is running near 18.6x, having compressed roughly 0.6 turns over the past 30 days — reflect a stock that is still priced for meaningful growth but has de-rated sharply from the 40x-plus territory where analyst targets were set early last year.
What to watch next is whether General Atlantic's buying pace slows, stabilises, or accelerates heading into the July earnings print — and whether Jana Partners' position moves further in either direction, given that activist dynamics remain the single clearest catalyst for any re-rating beyond the fundamentals.
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