Syndax Pharmaceuticals arrives at its May 5 investor event carrying fresh wounds — a Q1 revenue miss, an 11% single-day drop, and short interest at 24% of the free float.
Short sellers are deeply dug in. At 24.1% of the float — held roughly flat over the past month — the bear position is one of the more substantial in the biotech universe. Yet the lending market tells a calmer story: availability is loose, cost to borrow has barely moved at ~0.45%, and borrow demand has actually ticked down from its late-March highs of around 22 million shares to just under 21 million. The ORTEX short score of 69.4 sits near a multi-week high, but has not spiked sharply — suggesting the shorts are committed but not piling on aggressively. Days to cover runs at 15, a reminder that any forced unwind would take time.
Options traders are equally unmoved by the recent carnage. The put/call ratio is running at 0.29, in line with its 20-day average and nowhere near the 52-week defensive high of 0.93. That is a striking contrast: with the stock down 18% over the past month and now near $19, buyers of calls still outnumber buyers of puts by a wide margin. Either options traders are leaning on the large gap to the analyst consensus price target of $39.50 — which implies more than 100% upside from current levels — or they simply haven't repriced the downside risk yet.
The bull case centres on revumenib (Revuforj) and the broader menin-inhibitor franchise. Early combination data shows high complete response rates and strong MRD-negative outcomes, and frontline AML expansion is the next major commercial opportunity. Barclays maintained Overweight on May 1 and lifted its target to $37, and Stifel also raised its target on the therapy trajectory. Goldman Sachs raised its target to $34 in early April. The Street is not abandoning the story. The bear case is harder to dismiss after yesterday's print: the Q1 report missed revenue estimates, the company outlined roughly $400M in 2026 operating expenses, and an expanded boxed warning on its drug candidates remains a commercial overhang. The enterprise value still runs at roughly $1.7 billion against a net loss track record, and the EPS surprise factor score ranks in just the 39th percentile. Institutional ownership is dense — BlackRock at 9.3%, Vanguard adding over 1 million shares last quarter — but several specialist healthcare funds trimmed in Q4.
The May 5 event will test whether management can restore confidence in the Revuforj launch trajectory and reframe the revenue miss as timing rather than structural weakness — or whether the widening gap between analyst targets and a $19 stock price begins to close from the wrong direction.
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