PCRX heads into its May 1 earnings print with a notable divergence: short sellers are retreating while company insiders are cashing out.
The short-side picture has shifted meaningfully heading into the release. Short interest has fallen roughly 9% over the past week and 15% over the past month, bringing it to 17.1% of the free float — still elevated in absolute terms, but the direction of travel is clearly lower. Borrow conditions support that read: cost to borrow is just 0.58% and availability remains ample, signalling no meaningful squeeze pressure in the lending market. The ORTEX short score of 72.4, however, ranks in the bottom 9th percentile of the universe — a reminder that bears have not abandoned the name, even as they've trimmed.
Options traders, meanwhile, are leaning bullish into the print. The put/call ratio has drifted down to 0.32, well below its 20-day average of 0.35 and roughly 1.3 standard deviations beneath that mean. Call positioning is running hotter than usual relative to recent history, suggesting options participants see more upside than downside risk. The stock has recovered well — up nearly 10% over the past month to $25.49 — after a sharp post-earnings drop of 6.6% following the February print, when the five-day loss extended to 2.6%.
The insider angle cuts the other way. CFO Shawn Cross sold shares across four consecutive sessions in late April — totalling roughly $628,000 in proceeds between April 20 and April 23, all at prices in the $25 range. That followed CEO Frank Lee selling over $852,000 worth of stock in January. Net insider selling over the past 90 days reaches approximately $2.6 million. Insider sales immediately ahead of an earnings release can reflect routine plan-driven selling, but the cluster and timing are notable regardless.
Analyst opinion is divided but skews constructive. Barclays initiated with an Equal-Weight and trimmed its target to $25 in late March — essentially pinning fair value at the current price. Needham and HC Wainwright both maintain Buy ratings, with targets at $30 and $38 respectively. The consensus mean price target of $28.71 implies modest upside from current levels. Bulls point to EXPAREL's growing penetration in outpatient settings, reimbursement tailwinds for non-opioid treatments, and the pipeline optionality around the PCRX-201 gene therapy for knee osteoarthritis. Bears counter that EXPAREL has been on the market for 14 years and faces durability questions, while gene therapy timelines and clinical replication remain uncertain. Valuation offers little protection either way: the stock trades at 8.8x trailing earnings and 6.4x EV/EBITDA — cheap by pharma standards, but with EPS surprise ranking in just the 11th percentile, the market has not historically rewarded the company for beating estimates.
The print will test whether the recent share-price recovery reflects genuine commercial momentum in EXPAREL or simply a broader market bounce — and whether management's own selling ahead of the release squares with the bullish picture that call-heavy options positioning implies.
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