RXRX Carries One of Biotech's Heaviest Short Loads Into Today's Print

Recursion Pharmaceuticals enters today's earnings with a short position that dwarfs most of its closest peers. Short interest runs at 31.5% of free float, roughly 162 million shares, while correlated names like CRSP and SANA carry far lighter positioning. Among the peer group, ABSI and PRME both surged more than 20% last week; RXRX gained less than 1% in the same period, underperforming a peer median of around 10.8%.

That short position has been slowly unwinding. Shares short have fallen roughly 7% from late September's peak near 183 million, though the past week brought a modest 1.7% rise, suggesting the unwind has stalled ahead of the print. Borrow conditions do not reinforce the bear case: the cost to borrow has dropped more than 36% over the past month to just 0.66%, and availability has eased to around 46%, a meaningful improvement from the near-zero availability seen in late September when the stock was far more locked up. The ORTEX short score of 76.8, ranking in the bottom 6th percentile of the universe, reflects a structurally heavy short position rather than a fresh one being aggressively built. Insider activity over the past 90 days adds a cautionary note: net open-market sales of roughly $644,000 worth of shares, with the CEO, a director, and the CFO all trimming under pre-arranged 10b5-1 plans.

The analyst community is divided along a familiar fault line. Needham has held a Buy rating and an $8 target through multiple reiterations this year, pointing to clinical progress in REC-4881's FAP program, where polyp reductions have held through 25 weeks, and to the $10 million Sanofi milestone as evidence of platform credibility. JP Morgan carries an Overweight with a $10 target, though it trimmed that from $11 in April. Morgan Stanley sits at Equal-Weight with a $5.50 target, and BofA holds Neutral at $6. The mean target across the group is $7.31, implying roughly 91% upside to the current price near $3.83. The sceptical case centres on the gap between that target and the stock's actual trajectory: shares are down about 7% over the past month, and the pipeline remains in early Phase I/II territory, where failure rates are high and the competitive field in AI-driven drug discovery is crowded.

One secondary signal worth noting: Wikipedia page views for Recursion are running at a z-score of 3.7 above the company's own 90-day history, a notable spike in retail attention in the days before the print. That is an attention measure, not a revenue signal, but it does suggest the report is drawing a wider audience than usual.

The print will test whether clinical updates on REC-4881 and the broader REC-1245 monotherapy data are substantive enough to justify the gap between a $3.83 stock and a Street consensus that has converged around twice that level, while 31% of the float remains wagered against it.