Ocugen heads into its Q1 2026 earnings call today heavily scrutinised by short sellers, with the stock's lending dynamics forming the central narrative for the session.
Short interest is the dominant signal here. At 21.2% of free float — up more than 12% over the past month — this is a stock where more than one in five freely tradeable shares has been sold short. Days to cover checks in at 8.5 on the official FINRA read, meaning a meaningful short squeeze would take nearly two weeks of full trading volume to unwind. Yet borrow availability has eased recently, having loosened over the past week, and the cost to borrow has fallen sharply — down roughly 30% over the past month to just 0.86%. That pairing of high short interest and cheap, increasingly available borrow tells a nuanced story: shorts are well-positioned, but they aren't under pressure from the lending market. The ORTEX short score of 78.9 out of 100 puts OCGN in the 4th percentile of the universe — among the most heavily shorted names on the platform.
Options positioning adds a mild defensive lean into the print. The put/call ratio has climbed to 0.21, sitting roughly 1.5 standard deviations above its 20-day average of 0.18 and near its 52-week high of 0.21. In absolute terms the PCR remains low — OCGN is predominantly a calls-driven tape — but the recent drift higher suggests some incremental hedging demand ahead of the catalyst. The stock itself has recovered well: up 8.8% on the week and 3.4% on the month to $1.85, a modest rebound after a volatile first quarter.
The analyst community is constructive but the data is somewhat dated, with the consensus last updated in late March. At that point, multiple firms — including Canaccord Genuity and Oppenheimer — had recently initiated coverage with Buy and Outperform ratings, while HC Wainwright raised its target to $10. The mean price target across coverage sits at $11.57, implying substantial upside to the current price. The bull case centres on the Phase 2 ArMaDa data for Ocugen's geographic atrophy gene therapy, with a Phase 3 study expected to launch in the third quarter of 2026 and a potential commercial launch pencilled in for 2029. Bears point to the typical risks for a pre-revenue biotech: a history of losses, ongoing cash consumption, and the execution risk that surrounds any clinical programme before Phase 3 enrolment is complete. Janus Henderson recently built a 5.9% stake and Millennium Management added substantially to reach 5.0%, providing some institutional validation — though neither move changes the binary nature of the clinical-stage bet.
The earnings print is therefore less about near-term revenue and more about whether Ocugen can deliver further confidence in the Phase 3 timeline, the capital runway to sustain it, and any updated clinical data that gives the bull case fresh momentum against a heavily short-loaded register.
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