BAK heads into the final day of April with a corporate restructuring deal reshaping its shareholder register, a surge in short positions over the past fortnight, and a law firm investigation adding fresh uncertainty to an already complex picture.
The ownership story is the most pressing development. IG4 Capital sealed a deal to acquire Novonor's controlling stake in Braskem, a transaction that has been circulating for weeks but now carries real finality. That shift matters enormously for a company where two entities — Novonor's vehicle Kieppe Participações and Petróleo Brasileiro (PBR) — collectively hold nearly 74.5% of shares. Petrobras separately signed a new shareholders' agreement this week, cementing its position in the new ownership structure. Against this backdrop, Pomerantz Law Firm announced on April 29 it is investigating claims on behalf of BAK investors, adding a litigation overhang that the market is still pricing in.
Short positioning tells a charged story. Estimated short shares jumped roughly 50% over the past week, climbing from around 2.6 million to nearly 4 million shares — the highest level of the past month, though still modest at low single-digit percentage of free float. What makes the borrow picture more notable is the availability signal: with lending utilization running near 81%, the pool of shares available to borrow has tightened meaningfully relative to the highs seen earlier in the year when utilization touched 100%. Cost to borrow has eased — now running near 7.5% annually, down sharply from 11% at the start of April — which suggests the short build is being funded at cheaper rates even as demand picked up. The ORTEX short score is 54, placing the stock in the 100th percentile of its sector for short activity, flagging that bears have been notably more active here than in peers.
The earnings calendar adds another layer of complexity. Braskem published Q1 results on April 29, the same day the law firm investigation broke. An earlier event on April 27 produced a muted 1-day move of just +1.2%. The prior quarter was more punishing — the March 27 print sent the stock down nearly 12% on the day and almost 16% over the following week, a reaction that underscored how exposed BAK is to petrochemical margins, Brazilian real dynamics, and leverage concerns. The next formal earnings event is pencilled in for May 12. With the stock up 4.9% on the day and 4.3% on the week to close at $3.61, some of the recent short build may have been caught offside.
Analyst data is stale — the most recent changes date from September 2025, when UBS downgraded to Neutral with a $3.80 target and JPMorgan trimmed its target to $5.00. Both reflect a broadly cautious Street posture. The headline mean price target of $24.25 appears to reflect historical data from a different price environment and should not be read as a current consensus — BAK has traded in the low single digits for an extended period. What the factor scores do confirm is genuine nuance: EPS surprise ranks in the 94th percentile, and the 12-month forward EPS year-on-year increase score is 82nd percentile — suggesting the underlying earnings trend is not as dire as the negative PE and PB multiples imply. Those negative multiples reflect accumulated losses, not necessarily a company in terminal decline. The EV/EBITDA multiple of 10.3x, which has eased roughly 0.3 turns over the past month, is the more operational read on valuation.
The institutional register remains dominated by strategic holders, with Vanguard and BlackRock both adding modestly in Q1 2026. Norges Bank trimmed by 3.5 million shares earlier in the year. The float available to public investors and active traders is therefore quite thin — which helps explain why even a modest pickup in short selling can shift the utilization picture quickly.
The week to watch is the one beginning May 12, when the next earnings catalyst arrives against a backdrop of a freshly-settled ownership structure, an open investor investigation, and a borrow market that has tightened but not yet reached its recent extremes.
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