Dacotah Banks enters its April 30 Q1 reporting date having just experienced one of the more dramatic lending-market swings visible in the data — a complete reversal from fully squeezed to fully loose in less than two weeks.
The standout story this week is what happened in the borrow pool. Through the entire stretch from late March to early April — a full three weeks — availability was completely exhausted. Every share in the lending pool was spoken for. Then, around April 8, the lending market unlocked abruptly. By April 14, availability was effectively open again, and it has stayed that way. With availability now at roughly 2,020% of short interest — over 20 shares available to borrow for every one already borrowed — the borrow market has flipped from one extreme to the other. The ORTEX short score tracked this shift precisely: it ran near 48 through early April, then dropped sharply to around 31 after April 8, where it has since settled.
The actual short position is tiny enough that none of this represents meaningful directional pressure. Short interest is 133 shares — a fraction of a percent of free float, around 0.001% — and FINRA's most recent fortnightly filing confirmed just 16 shares net short as of mid-April with one day to cover. The mid-March surge in estimated short interest, from roughly 10 to 123 shares, appears to have been the event that temporarily exhausted the lending pool. The subsequent normalisation suggests the position was either covered or the inventory was replenished. Cost to borrow, last recorded at around 5.6% in mid-March, is modest by historical standards — the stock has traded north of 15% CTB during past episodes going back to 2021.
The more substantive story for this week is Wednesday's earnings release. The full-year 2025 report, filed in March, showed net income nearly doubling year-on-year to $46.75 million. Net interest income rose to $161 million from $130 million, and basic EPS climbed from $2.66 to $4.20. The Q4 and fiscal year 2025 results due today represent the first detailed quarterly print against those strong full-year numbers. Prior earnings reactions for DBIN have been muted — none of the last three prints moved the stock more than 1.8% on the day, and the stock effectively ended each five-day window near where it started. At $43.50, the stock is down about 1% on the week after a modest 1.2% gain on Monday.
Analyst and institutional data are not available for this OTC-traded community bank, and the dividend history in the dataset runs only to early 2022. The ORTEX dividend factor score sits at 63 — solidly above average, consistent with a regional bank that historically returned capital to shareholders — but the absence of recent dividend data makes it impossible to characterise the current payout posture.
What to watch today is less about the borrow market and more about whether the revenue and margin trends that drove the strong full-year result held through Q4 — and what management signals about net interest income in an environment where rate expectations have shifted considerably since year-end.
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