TMC Bulls Dominate Options as Shorts Cover Ahead of Results

TMC heads into today's earnings print with options traders in an unusually bullish posture for a stock that still carries significant regulatory risk.

The options market is the clearest signal here. Call positioning dominates to a degree that stands out against TMC's own recent history — the put/call ratio has dropped to 0.13, well below its 20-day average of 0.14 and sitting near the 52-week low of 0.10. For a pre-revenue deep-sea mining company awaiting a federal license, that kind of lopsided call exposure is notable. It suggests traders are positioning for upside from the print rather than buying protection against disappointment.

The short interest picture adds a complementary angle. Bears have been retreating. Short interest fell roughly 9% over the past week to 6.3% of the free float — still a meaningful short position, but directionally moving in favour of bulls. Borrow conditions remain undemanding: the cost to borrow is under 0.7%, and availability, while tighter than earlier in the year (the 52-week low hit 23%), has loosened back to around 87% of shares already borrowed — far from the squeeze territory that characterised earlier episodes. The ORTEX short score, running near 70, keeps TMC in elevated-short-score territory, but the week-on-week decline in shares short suggests some of that bearish conviction is being unwound into the event. Correlated peers followed a similar pattern over the week — MP rallied 13% and USAR gained 7%, pointing to a broader sector tailwind that TMC has partially participated in, up 7% on the week before giving back 1.3% on Thursday.

The analyst community has been uniformly bullish, though none of the firms covering TMC qualify as major Wall Street bellwethers. Maxim Group initiated with a Buy at $10 in early June, and HC Wainwright has held a Buy with a target around $11.75. Wedbush lifted its target to $10 in May. Against a current price of $4.41, the mean target of $11 implies roughly 150% upside — but the gap reflects how much the market discounts are embedded in regulatory uncertainty rather than any near-term earnings power. TMC is pre-revenue, loss-making (earnings yield sits at around -5.2%), and carries a price-to-book multiple above 20x based on the carrying value of its nodule resource. Bulls point to the NOAA certification process and a projected 2028 production start as near-term catalysts that could unlock value; bears counter that the environmental and regulatory hurdles remain substantial and could delay the timeline materially. Both cases are entirely credible — this is a story where regulatory news flow matters far more than any quarterly financial result.

The print today is therefore less a test of financial performance — TMC has none in the conventional sense — and more a test of whether management's tone on the licensing timeline and project financing can sustain the optimism already priced into the options market.