Mineralys Therapeutics heads into mid-June with a clear tension: short sellers are adding pressure while the stock drifts lower, yet the lending market remains far too loose to suggest a squeeze is imminent.
Short interest has climbed meaningfully over the past month — up 12% to 12.4% of the free float, with a further 5.8% week-on-week build adding roughly 540,000 shares to the short book. That 12.4% float figure is a material level for a clinical-stage biotech, and the trend is plainly upward. The official FINRA settlement figure, dated May 29, put short shares at 9.48 million with a days-to-cover of 6.82 — consistent with the daily estimates. What the lending market does not show, however, is stress. Availability is running at roughly 490%, meaning nearly five shares remain available to borrow for every one already lent out. The 52-week low for availability was 318% (hit briefly on June 4), and the current reading is well off that floor. Borrow costs are correspondingly relaxed at 0.52%, essentially flat on the month. The short-score has edged up to 62.8 from 61.6 two weeks ago — directionally bearish, but not extreme. Options positioning is mildly cautious: the put/call ratio at 0.77 sits just fractionally above its 20-day average of 0.72, a z-score of 0.29 that registers as near-neutral. Taken together, the positioning picture reads as growing short conviction in a name where borrow remains cheap and plentiful — crowding is not the story here.
The Street continues to lean firmly bullish on the lorundrostat thesis, but the gap between analyst targets and the current price tells its own story. The consensus mean target is $49, more than double the $23.99 close — a wide discount that reflects both genuine excitement about the drug's clinical profile and the market's wait-and-see skepticism ahead of an NDA submission. B of A Securities raised its target to $51 in March. Goldman Sachs, in September 2025, pushed its target from $32 to $52. TD Cowen initiated with a Buy in late April. The direction of travel among analysts has been consistently upward, with the lone outlier being Jefferies, which maintained a Hold rating (though it also raised its target substantially, from $15 to $26 in September 2025). The bull case centres on lorundrostat's placebo-adjusted blood pressure benefit of more than 10mmHg — compelling data in resistant hypertension where few options exist. The bear case is less about the science and more about execution: market penetration rates, pricing power, hyperkalemia safety signals, and the capital required to fund commercialisation for a company with deeply negative earnings (EPS yield of –0.09, EV/EBITDA of –8.7).
The institutional register shows active involvement from specialist biotech funds. RA Capital holds 9.3% of shares and added 369,000 shares in Q1. Wellington Management disclosed a position of 4.1% after adding 2.57 million shares as recently as April. OrbiMed picked up 1.07 million shares in Q1. Point72 added 704,000 shares. The insider picture is less encouraging. The Chief Medical Officer, David Rodman, has been selling consistently — multiple transactions from April through June 12, totalling around $870,000 in proceeds at prices ranging from roughly $24 to $31. The CEO, Jon Congleton, sold $422,000 worth in mid-April. These are modest sums relative to the company's float and show low trade significance scores, but the pattern of steady CMO selling into a declining stock is worth noting against the backdrop of rising short interest.
Earnings history for MLYS is short. The most recent print, on May 21, delivered a one-day move of +5% and a five-day follow-through of +11%. The prior event in May produced a –1% day-one move and a –11% five-day drift. The August 5 next event date is roughly seven weeks out — enough runway for short interest to either continue building or for a catalyst to shift the narrative if FDA engagement around the NDA submission produces a headline.
What to watch next: how short interest evolves as the company gets closer to its NDA submission timeline, and whether the persistent CMO selling pattern continues or reverses as the stock approaches the lower end of its recent range.
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