OUST has recovered ground meaningfully since the prior note on June 10 — the stock closed Monday at $45.18, up 14% in a single session and 11% on the week, erasing the retreat that had pushed it below the May 26 insider sale prices. That rebound changes the context materially: the CTO and COO sold aggressively at $39–$45 three weeks ago, and the stock is now trading at or above those levels again heading into Tuesday's print.
Short sellers have been stepping back throughout the rally. Short interest fell nearly 12% on the week to 8.7% of the free float — down from closer to 10.4% in late May, when the stock was still climbing. The borrow market reflects no stress: availability is loose at 324%, well above even the tightest reading of the past year at 146%, and the cost to borrow sits at a negligible 0.47%. The ORTEX short score has also drifted lower over the past two weeks, from 56 to 52, pointing in the same direction. Shorts are not pressing into this print — they have been quietly covering into the strength.
Options positioning is only mildly more cautious than usual. The put/call ratio is running at 0.45, slightly above its 20-day average of 0.40 but well within normal range at less than one standard deviation above the mean. That is a far cry from defensive — the 52-week high on the PCR is 1.11, and the current reading is close to the low end of the recent range. Options traders appear broadly comfortable with the setup rather than hedging against a sharp downside move.
The bull-bear debate turns on whether Ouster's operating trajectory can justify the re-rating. Bulls point to the 4QF25 blowout — $62.2M in revenue, up 107% year-over-year — alongside $177M in bookings and growing design-win momentum across industrial and robotics end markets. Rosenblatt lifted its target to $53 in late May, still above the current price, while the consensus of six buy-rated analysts clusters around $46.86. Bears counter that the Q4 revenue spike was inflated by a one-time royalty, gross margin sustainability is unproven, and a lidar market growing more competitive by the quarter makes the valuation — price-to-book near 9.5x on a company still generating negative earnings — hard to defend. Cantor Fitzgerald stepped down to Neutral after the last print, a signal the margin picture has not yet convinced everyone.
Tuesday's report is therefore less a question of whether Ouster can grow and more a test of whether the royalty-stripped business can deliver the organic revenue run-rate that would justify a stock back at $45.
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