Hims & Hers Health arrives at its May 11 earnings call carrying a striking contradiction: short sellers have been cutting exposure at the fastest pace in months, yet short interest still accounts for roughly a third of the free float, making this one of the most heavily shorted names in health care.
The short-side retreat is the most interesting development of the past six weeks. Short interest stood near 42% of the free float in mid-March. It has since fallen to 33.8% — a drop of about 8 percentage points — as roughly 12 million shares were covered over that span. That's a meaningful unwind, but the absolute level remains extreme. At just under 32% on a reported basis, with FINRA's most recent fortnightly data showing 69.8 million shares short and 3 days to cover, HIMS is far from a clean slate for bears. The ORTEX short score sits at 68.3, ranking in the 6th percentile of all names — meaning almost every other stock in the universe carries a lower short-positioning signal. The lending market reflects this: availability is tight, with utilization running at 85% against a 52-week peak of 91%. Borrowing costs, however, have retreated sharply — cost to borrow dropped roughly 25% over the past week to just under 1%, suggesting the acute scramble for stock to short has eased even as the overall position remains heavy.
Options traders are not particularly alarmed ahead of the print. The put/call ratio is running at 0.68, only modestly above its 20-day average of 0.65 and well below the 52-week high of 1.52. That is near the bullish end of the past year's range, implying options flow leans toward call activity rather than hedging. The contrast with the short book is notable: investors holding options are not rushing to protect against downside, even while a large short position persists in the lending market.
The Street has moved in HIMS's direction over the past six weeks, though without full conviction. JPMorgan initiated coverage at Overweight with a $35 target in late April — the most bullish stance among recent entrants. B of A has twice lifted its target this spring, first to $25, then to $32, while staying at Neutral. Barclays raised its Overweight target to $29 in March. The bear camp is thinning: Citigroup upgraded from Sell to Neutral in early March, more than halving the gap to its prior bearish stance. Consensus still skews cautious — several firms hold Hold or Market Perform ratings — but the direction of travel has been upward. The mean price target of $26 sits very close to the current price of $26.33, which tells you the Street as a whole is not pricing in significant near-term upside. JPMorgan's $35 target represents the bullish outlier rather than the central case. Forward earnings momentum is a notable bright spot: the 12-month forward EPS growth estimate ranks in the 95th percentile of the universe, one of the highest scores across the coverage. The PE has expanded sharply, up about 6 points over the past 30 days to nearly 22x, as the stock's 38% one-month rally pulled the multiple higher. The price-to-book stands at 4.4x. Neither valuation looks stretched for a high-growth telehealth platform, but neither screams cheap.
Insider selling has been persistent. CFO Oluyemi Okupe sold shares on four separate occasions between late March and late April — roughly 78,000 shares across those trades for total proceeds near $2.1 million. COO Michael Chi sold just over 97,000 shares in mid-March for approximately $2.4 million. The insider net over 90 days is technically positive at $36 million, but that figure is dominated by founder Andrew Dudum's position — which grew by 431,885 shares per the most recent filing — rather than by open-market buying from executives. The pattern among operating management is one-directional: selling into the rally. The most recent quarter saw HIMS post a 1-day drop of nearly 4% after the May 4 earnings announcement, continuing a mixed reaction history — the prior release saw a modest 2% gain, while earlier prints were flat to slightly negative. None of the historical post-earnings moves were large in either direction. The company has a partnership with Novo Nordisk covering GLP-1 treatments including Wegovy, a key revenue growth driver; the May 11 print will be closely watched for how that revenue stream is maturing and whether the regulatory environment around compounded GLP-1 products is shifting.
The set-up heading into the call is one of heavy — but declining — short positioning, call-side options skew, a stock trading near analyst consensus, and a management team that has been using the month's rally to trim. How the borrow market responds to the earnings print, and whether the covering trend continues or stalls, will shape the next leg of the short-interest story.
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