AbCellera Biologics heads into the back half of June with a striking internal contradiction: short sellers have been piling in all week, yet options traders are as bullish as they've been in over a year.
Short interest is the dominant feature of this setup. At nearly 16% of free float — up 9% on the week and 8% on the month — bearish conviction has been rebuilding steadily since early June, when shorts added roughly 4.2 million shares in a single session around June 8-9. That follows a February-to-May period where the short count had drifted slightly lower. The borrow market tells a more nuanced story this week: cost to borrow has dropped sharply, falling roughly 31% in seven days to 5.2%, well off the highs above 8% seen in late May and early June. Meanwhile, availability has loosened materially — from a tight ~58-60% range midweek last week to 107% as of Tuesday, meaning the lending pool now has roughly as many shares available as are currently borrowed. That shift in borrow dynamics suggests shorts are finding the trade easier to put on, not harder, which may partly explain why the position count has grown without a corresponding squeeze.
The options market pulls in the opposite direction. The put/call ratio has collapsed to 0.42, more than two standard deviations below its 20-day average of 0.54 — the most call-skewed reading in over a year, with the 52-week low sitting at 0.094 and the high at 0.625 for context. This is not a defensive setup. Call buyers have dominated the options tape for the past two sessions, a sharp reversal from the more balanced hedging posture that dominated through most of May. The ORTEX short score of 77.7 remains elevated — signalling significant bearish pressure in the broader data — but has ticked down from its recent peak of 79.7 on June 12, hinting the worst of the short-pressure signal may be passing.
The Street is cautiously constructive but operating on data that is becoming dated. The most recent analyst action was Cantor Fitzgerald's Steve Seedhouse initiating coverage at Overweight with a $7 target in early May — a modest entry point versus the mean target of around $10.43, which sits well above the current $5.09 price. Jones Trading initiated at Buy with an $11 target in April. Both initiations represent fresh conviction, though neither comes from a bellwether firm. The price/book multiple has compressed roughly 14% over the past month to 1.6x, reflecting the stock's pullback after a strong April-May run. The company carries a negative EV/EBITDA of around -4.8x, consistent with a pre-profitability biotech still burning cash. The stock is down roughly 4% on the week and 3.2% on Tuesday alone, though the one-month gain of 24% provides context — this week's weakness looks more like consolidation after a sharp run than a trend reversal.
Insider buying has been a consistent signal beneath the noise. CEO and founder Carl Hansen bought 215,000 shares across two transactions in late February at prices around $3.27-3.44, following a 343,000-share purchase in March 2025 near $2.16. Independent Director John Montalbano added another 20,000 shares as recently as May 14 at $4.77. The pattern across nearly three years shows no insider selling — only accumulation, typically at prices well below where the stock trades today. Hansen now holds an 18.7% stake, and Baker Bros. Advisors — a specialist healthcare fund — disclosed adding 28 million shares to reach a 9.9% position as of late April, one of the more significant institutional moves in the cap table.
The next scheduled earnings event lands August 10. The most recent print, on May 11, produced a 5.5% one-day drop followed by a 20.6% decline over the following five sessions — a reminder that results have been punishing when they disappoint. The prior June 11 event generated a 2.9% one-day gain. The question heading into the summer is whether the call-heavy options positioning reflects genuine fundamental optimism or simply a momentum trade on the back of the stock's 24% monthly gain — and whether the rebuilding short base has a catalyst in mind for August.
See the live data behind this article on ORTEX.
Open ABCL on ORTEX →ORTEX Market Intelligence content is generated by AI from a snapshot of ORTEX's proprietary data. Content is informational only and does not constitute investment advice.
