ImmunityBio has hit a new inflection point this week — the borrow market, already tight heading into the June 9 earnings release, has effectively run dry, even as the stock dropped 7% over the past five days to $6.72.
The lending dynamic is the standout this week. Availability collapsed to just 0.25% on June 16 — meaning the pool is essentially exhausted, with virtually no shares left to borrow relative to existing short positions. That is a dramatic deterioration from the 6.1% reading on June 15, itself already in "very tight" territory, and marks the most constrained borrow environment of the past year. Cost to borrow has risen in step, climbing 21% over the week to 5.1% — still well below the early-May peak near 6.4%, but moving in the wrong direction for anyone looking to initiate or maintain a short. Short interest itself is holding at 13.5% of free float, essentially flat on the week after a modest 3.8% reduction over the past month. The position is deeply entrenched: FINRA's fortnightly settlement data put days-to-cover at 7.6, meaning unwinding would take more than a week's worth of average volume. The ORTEX short score has crept to 80.2 — its highest reading this month — and ranks in the 4th percentile of the broader universe, flagging extreme short-side pressure by most measures.
Options positioning, by contrast, remains strikingly calm. The put/call ratio at 0.30 is essentially glued to its 20-day average, with a z-score near zero and no sign of panic hedging despite the week's losses. That same composure was noted ahead of the June 9 print. It has held through the post-earnings decline, which adds a small puzzle: the stock is down, the borrow pool has gone to near-zero, yet options traders are not buying protection at elevated rates.
The fundamental backdrop explains why bulls are not capitulating. Covering analysts — HC Wainwright & Co. reiterated its Buy with a $15 target as recently as June 2, and BTIG maintained its Buy at $12 in late May — remain constructive on ANKTIVA's commercial momentum in BCG-unresponsive bladder cancer and the broadening pipeline into NSCLC. The bull case rests on the FDA-accepted sBLA for the papillary-only indication representing a meaningful expansion of the addressable patient pool. The bear case focuses on the company's single-product dependency, mixed survival data from earlier trials, and a balance sheet that carries a deeply negative Piotroski F-score. The gap between the $6.72 share price and the $13 mean analyst target — nearly double — captures the degree of disagreement. One caveat: the $23 target held by D. Boral Capital looks disconnected from current price levels and may reflect a more speculative scenario.
The earnings history adds useful texture here. The June 9 release itself produced a 2.6% one-day decline and a further 6.3% drop over five days — consistent with the stock's tendency to react negatively to prints. The March 3 release was far worse, with a 14% one-day fall and a 23% five-day drawdown. Founder and CMO Patrick Soon-Shiong controls 27.8% of shares, and California Capital Equity holds a further 24.7%, meaning more than half the float is effectively locked up — which partly explains why the available borrow pool is so thin even at relatively modest aggregate short interest of 13.5%.
The next earnings event is August 7. With availability now at near-zero and short interest barely moving despite a falling stock price, the key tension heading into that print is whether short sellers face a genuine mechanical constraint in adding exposure — or whether the exhaustion of the borrow pool simply reflects a short base that has reached its natural ceiling.
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