ResMed Options Skew Stands Out as Peers Rally Into Earnings

RMD has outrun most of its medical device peers over the past week, gaining 5.8% against a median of roughly 4% for its closest correlated names. SYK, STE and MMSI each added around 4 to 4.6%, while BDX and ZBH rose closer to 3.7%. Only ISRG kept pace, up about 6%. RMD's gain has come with an options market that looks markedly more defensive than anything visible in those peers.

The put/call ratio has climbed sharply over the past week and now sits at 3.91, well above its 20-day average of 2.93. That is roughly 1.5 standard deviations above the mean, a reading that points to a pronounced preference for downside protection heading into the October 29 print. The skew is not at its worst of the year, where the ratio touched 6.12 at the 52-week peak, but the jump from the low-2s in late September to the current level is the more informative move. Short interest, by contrast, tells a quieter story. At 8.6% of free float, it is not negligible for a large-cap health care name, but it has been falling steadily. Over the past month it is down more than 6%, and borrow costs are unchanged at just above 0.5%. Availability is ample at over 430%, so there is no mechanical pressure in the lending market driving that put demand.

The analyst community is broadly constructive but has been pulling in two directions. Since the last quarterly print in early August, which triggered a 5.4% single-day decline, RBC Capital upgraded the stock and lifted its target to $262, while firms that responded directly to that report, including Wells Fargo, Piper Sandler and Keybanc, either cut targets or held them flat. The current mean target is $251.51, sitting fractionally below the $252.86 close, which reflects a Street that has largely priced in the recovery. The bull case rests on mask sales running at 16% year-over-year growth, a gross margin of 62.3% beating estimates by 40 basis points, and EPS of $2.81 topping forecasts. The bear case centres on management's decision to reduce the FY26 growth outlook for its segment to mid-single-digit from high-single-digit, weak international device volumes, and the persistent question of whether GLP-1 adoption will structurally erode the addressable sleep apnea population over time.

Retail attention has picked up meaningfully into the event, with Wikipedia views running 1.6 standard deviations above their own 90-day baseline, the highest engagement reading in recent months. None of the alt-data series covering RMD, which include FDA medical device records and clinical trial filings, has been measured to lead the company's reported figures, so the attention signal is colour rather than any guide to the print itself.

The October 29 report will test whether management's reduced growth guidance was conservative enough to be beaten, or whether international weakness and the margin of the stock's recent re-rating leave little room for anything short of a clean beat across all segments.