Ocular Therapeutix has passed through its June 17 readout event and the bullish options positioning that preceded it has begun to normalise — leaving the stock at $8.94 with a more mixed set of signals than the call-heavy setup of a week ago.
The most notable shift is in short interest, which has quietly declined. Bears pulled back about 2% on the week to 12.3% of free float — still a meaningful level for a small pharma, but the direction of travel has turned. Over the past month, though, the picture is more complicated: shorts actually built by nearly 12% from mid-May through early June before this week's partial retreat, suggesting the catalyst event drew fresh positioning that is now partly unwinding. The borrow market remains loose, which is consistent with orderly covering rather than a squeeze. Availability has loosened further to 348% — well above its 52-week low of 182% — meaning there is ample supply for anyone still wanting to put on a short. Cost to borrow has eased to 0.42%, down 17% on the week, reinforcing that there is no stress in the lending pool. The ORTEX short score has drifted down from 69.2 on June 8 to 67.7 today, a modest but directional improvement.
Options positioning, by contrast, has normalised back toward neutral after last week's extreme call skew. The put/call ratio has crept up to 0.26 from a low of 0.23 midweek, and now sits within a standard deviation of its 20-day mean of 0.28. That is a meaningful change from the sub-minus-two-sigma read flagged in the prior note. The options market no longer reads as aggressively positioned for upside — the event has passed, and traders are resetting their hedges accordingly.
The Street remains broadly constructive but the analyst data carries a note of caution. All recent coverage reiterates Buy or Outperform, with RBC Capital holding at $30 and Needham at $18 — a wide dispersion that reflects genuine uncertainty about the commercial trajectory. The consensus mean target of $26 implies substantial upside from the current $8.94 print, but the analyst data is now 82 days stale and no firm has moved a target since early May. The bull case centres on Axpaxli's potential to reduce injection frequency in wet AMD and a pipeline that includes multiple hydrogel-platform candidates. Bears point to competition from entrenched anti-VEGF franchises and ongoing cash consumption. Factor scores add texture: the EPS surprise rank at the 81st percentile is genuinely strong, and 90-day EPS momentum ranks in the 76th percentile, but the short score rank sits at just the 14th percentile, meaning most of the universe carries a lighter short burden.
Institutional ownership shows a cluster of specialist healthcare funds with meaningful conviction. Deep Track Capital added over 11.6 million shares in Q1 to reach 8.99% of shares, and VR Management added 3.5 million to hit 4.7%. Point72 and T. Rowe Price both entered or substantially increased positions in the same quarter, suggesting the catalyst-driven setup attracted sophisticated capital. That base provides some stability, though it also means a disappointed outcome could accelerate selling from concentrated holders.
Recent earnings reactions give a mixed picture. The May 8 quarterly print produced a -4.1% one-day move and a -5.4% five-day move, while a May 5 event saw a smaller -0.6% day-one drop followed by a -6.2% five-day drift. The next scheduled event is August 6 — what the market does with the intervening data from the June 17 readout will set the tone for how that date is approached.
Peer performance this week diverged sharply: TRVI added 13.3% and EYPT gained 9.4%, while CVKD dropped 23%. OCUL's 5.5% weekly gain sits in the middle of that range. The catalyst has been digested — what happens to short interest over the next two weeks as fresh data circulates will be the clearest read on whether the post-readout positioning shift has further to run.
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