10x Genomics heads into mid-June with a striking contrast: short sellers are quietly reducing positions into a 50% monthly price rally, while the options market is turning increasingly bullish — a combination that tells a clear story about the pressure building on the bear side.
The short positioning story is the most interesting thing in this data. Short interest has dropped sharply — down nearly 18% over the past week to 14.4% of the free float — a meaningful retreat from the 20-million-share levels that persisted through most of May and into early June. The swing is visible in the history: shorts held around 20.5 million shares through the first week of June, then shed nearly four million shares in a matter of days as the stock pushed higher. Yet 14.4% of float is still a heavy structural short position, and the borrow market offers no real drama — cost to borrow sits at just 0.43%, and availability is exceptionally loose at 641%, well above even the 52-week floor of 260%. Short sellers face no squeeze pressure from the lending market; those reducing exposure are doing so voluntarily, not because the borrow is being called.
Options positioning amplifies the bullish lean. The put/call ratio has dropped to 0.24 — its most call-heavy reading in weeks, running more than 1.3 standard deviations below the 20-day average of 0.33. That's not extreme defensiveness flipping to greed, but it does reflect a market that is adding upside exposure, not hedging against a fall. The 52-week low on the PCR is 0.06, so there's room to run further into call territory if momentum continues.
The Street's read on TXG is more cautious than the tape implies. The analyst consensus leans neutral-to-mixed: Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan both raised targets in May to $22 and $20 respectively while maintaining neutral ratings, well below the current $31.75 price. Barclays and Canaccord are more constructive — Barclays rates it Overweight with a $30 target, Canaccord carries a Buy and a $32 target — but even the optimistic camp barely clears the current price. The mean analyst target of $25.77 sits roughly 19% below where the stock is trading, a rare setup where the stock has materially outrun the consensus. Valuation reflects the tension: the price-to-book has expanded by roughly 1.6x over the past 30 days to 5.1x, while the EV/EBITDA remains deeply negative at -54.9x, underlining that the bull case rests on future growth rather than current profitability. The ORTEX EPS momentum scores confirm this split — near-term 30-day EPS momentum ranks in the 94th percentile, while the 90-day measure sits at just the 2nd percentile, meaning analysts have been lifting near-term numbers while cutting longer-horizon estimates.
Institutional ownership adds an interesting footnote. FMR (Fidelity) is the largest holder at 14.7% and added nearly 5.8 million shares in its most recent filing — a substantial move into a stock that was trading well below current levels when most of that buying occurred. ARK Investment Management holds 9.2% with minimal recent change. The bear case from Benzinga flags the structural overhang clearly: revenues contracted in 2024, the stock is still down over 90% from its 2021 peak, and a genuine earnings recovery is not expected before 2027. The bull case points to consumables volume growth and the long-term platform value — but the current price already prices in a significant portion of that recovery narrative.
The next scheduled earnings event is August 7. The prior two prints both saw the stock fall — roughly 5% the day after each — suggesting the market has been unwilling to reward results, at least until this recent re-rating. With the stock now trading above most analyst targets and short sellers actively trimming, the August print will be a cleaner test of whether the 50% rally reflects genuine fundamental re-rating or has simply run ahead of the numbers.
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