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Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals is caught between a rapidly growing short position and a Street consensus that still sees the stock nearly doubling from here, a gap that makes the next few weeks worth watching closely.
Short sellers have been adding exposure at a meaningful pace. SI has risen to 7.85% of the free float, up 11.5% over the past week and almost 20% over the past month. The absolute share count now stands above 10.6 million, the highest level in the 30-day history captured here, with the sharpest single-week jump coming in the Oct. 8 to 13 window. The cost to borrow has moved in the same direction, climbing 26.5% on the week to 0.54%, though in absolute terms it remains inexpensive. Borrow availability tells a different story altogether: at 2,270% of short interest, there are roughly 22 shares available in the lending pool for every one already borrowed. That is well above the 52-week low of 658%, and it means there is no friction whatsoever for anyone wanting to build or cover a short position. Positioning is building, but the borrow market is not tight enough to create squeeze pressure.
Options are marginally more defensive than their recent average, though not dramatically so. The put/call ratio is 0.54, a little above the 20-day mean of 0.51, with a z-score below one. That is a modest uptick in hedging demand, consistent with the stock's 30% slide over the past month to $58.13, but it does not signal anything close to panic. By comparison, the 52-week high on the PCR was 0.69, so there is still meaningful room before options positioning looks truly defensive.
The Street remains far more optimistic than current price action suggests. Goldman Sachs reinstated coverage on September 24 with a Neutral rating and a $74 target, just 27% above the current price. That was notably cautious relative to the rest of the analyst community: Citi initiated at Buy with a $108 target, RBC held at Outperform with $100, Morgan Stanley maintained Overweight at $120, and HC Wainwright kept its Buy with a $120 target. The mean target across the group is around $107, implying roughly 84% upside from today's close. Bulls point to the plozasiran Phase 3 data, which showed 79% to 81% triglyceride reduction at 12 months and a 78% cut in acute pancreatitis events, along with a planned sNDA before year-end using a priority review voucher. Bears focus on cash burn and the risk that commercialisation of Redemplo proves slower than the pipeline data suggests. The company does not pay a dividend and has negative earnings, with a P/E of around minus 16 and a P/B that has expanded sharply over the past month.
Sarepta Therapeutics is on the register as a Schedule 13D activist holder, having filed twice since February 2025. The last disclosed stake was around 9.5%, though the most recent filing was in August 2025 and no current position figure is shown. Per the standard 13D/G disclosure caveat, stakes are as last disclosed around the 5% threshold, and a holder dropping below 5% may not file again. BlackRock remains the largest conventional institutional holder at around 10.5% of shares, and FMR added 771,000 shares in the most recent reported quarter. The most recent insider activity on record, from August 18, was a director selling 11,600 shares at $87.30 in a discretionary open-market transaction, around 50% above the current price.
Earnings are scheduled for November 25, 42 days out. The two most relevant prior prints both produced modest positive reactions, with one-day moves of roughly 1% to 3%. With the stock down 30% in a month and shorts still building, the question heading into that date is whether the plozasiran regulatory timeline and Redemplo prescription trajectory can close the gap between where the stock is trading and where most of the Street still has its targets.
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