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MMED reports earnings Thursday afternoon with short interest at a fresh high, borrow availability near zero, and options traders leaning toward calls rather than protection.
Since Wednesday's earnings preview note, the short position has moved again. Shares short reached 28.2 million by October 7, up 8.9% in a single session and 33% on the week. That puts the one-month build at roughly 256%. Availability, already near the floor at 0.38% in Wednesday's note, briefly touched 0.08% on October 6 before recovering fractionally. At current levels, there is effectively one share available to borrow for every 270 already lent out. Cost to borrow pulled back to 29.8% from a peak of 35.6% on October 6, but remains nearly eight times where it was six weeks ago. The ORTEX short score has held between 90 and 94 all week, a sustained extreme rather than a one-day spike.
Options are still telling the opposite story. The put/call ratio is 0.84, roughly 1.2 standard deviations below its 20-day average of 1.11. That is one of the lowest defensive readings of the past year and nearly a mirror image of the borrow setup. Short sellers are fighting for every share they can find, while options buyers are positioned for a rally. The gap between those two signals is as wide heading into Thursday's close as it was when this note first flagged it.
The Street tilted bullish into the print. Mizuho raised its target to $28 from $26 this morning, maintaining Outperform. Barclays initiated yesterday at Equal-Weight with a $22 target, the lone voice of caution in a recent run of positive initiations and upgrades. Truist started coverage at Buy with a $29 target two weeks ago. The mean target across the coverage group is $24.85, roughly 30% above the $19.11 close on October 7. Bulls lean on the standalone operating model, the end-to-end AID platform, and new product launches including Flex, Fit, Go, and Vivera. Bears point to the Medtronic overhang: Medtronic still holds 89.9% of shares, and the eventual tax-free distribution keeps clean standalone price discovery limited. The PE multiple has compressed roughly 16% over the past 30 days, consistent with the 18% one-month price decline.
The ownership structure remains the structural fact underneath everything else. With Medtronic holding nearly 90% of shares via a Schedule 13G passive filing, the actively traded float is small. That scarcity explains how availability could collapse from 50% to under 1% in six weeks as the short interest tripled. It also frames the earnings reaction risk. The two recorded prior earnings events both produced moves above 14% on day one, with the five-day drift extending to roughly 15% to 20%. Whether that pattern repeats after Thursday's 4pm ET release, and in which direction, is the question the week's positioning has been building toward.
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Open MMED on ORTEX →ORTEX Market Intelligence content is generated by AI from a snapshot of ORTEX's proprietary data and reviewed by the ORTEX team. Content is informational only and does not constitute investment advice.
