Oklo heads into its May 12 earnings report with an unusual tension: a 42% price surge over the past month, a cluster of insider selling at the top, and a short book that has quietly grown 29% since early April.
The insider story is the standout this week. On May 1, every C-suite executive sold simultaneously. CEO and co-founder Jacob DeWitte sold roughly 100,000 shares across multiple transactions, raising approximately $7.0m. Co-founder and COO Caroline Cochran sold 100,000 shares for around $7.1m. CFO Richard Bealmear added another $1.1m. The sells came at prices between $69 and $71 — right at the top of the one-month rally. Net 90-day insider flow remains positive in shares (largely reflecting earlier institutional movements), but the May 1 cluster reads as co-ordinated profit-taking by the people closest to the story, executed with five days to go before Q1 results.
The short side has been building to match that caution. Short interest climbed from 22.6m shares at the start of April to a peak of 31.1m on April 29, a 37% rise in under four weeks, before easing slightly to 29.5m — now 18.9% of the free float. The borrow market is tightening in parallel. The lending pool has tightened significantly, with availability now at roughly 84% of outstanding borrowed shares — well off the 52-week tightest level of 97.7%, but up sharply from mid-April's looser conditions around 55-70%. Cost to borrow has crept higher too, up 37% over the past month to 1.0% annualised, though that absolute level remains low. The short score has held steady near 70 all week, ranking in just the 3rd percentile of the universe — meaning almost every other stock scores lower on the short-pressure composite. Days to cover, at 5.8, add another layer: it would take close to six days of average volume to cover the short book.
Options positioning has grown more defensive as the earnings date approaches. The put/call ratio is running at 0.73, nearly 1.8 standard deviations above its 20-day average of 0.66. That's not an extreme reading — the 52-week high is 1.15 — but the direction of travel is clear. Over the past two weeks, the PCR has moved from below 0.62 to its current level, accelerating as the print nears. Investors are buying more downside protection than they have at any point in the recent post-rally period.
New analyst coverage has been broadly constructive. Tigress Financial initiated with a Buy and a $130 target on April 27. HSBC opened coverage at Buy/$96 on April 23. Those two initiation calls frame the upside case: Oklo's 12 GW pipeline ambition, its HALEU-fuel Aurora reactor under construction in Idaho — which received NRC approval for its principal design criteria on May 6 — and the potential fuel-recycling and isotope businesses. On the cautious side, Goldman Sachs maintained Neutral after cutting its target from $91 to $65 in March, and UBS trimmed to $60 from $95 the same week, both following the stock's earlier volatility. The Street consensus mean target is $91.36 against a current price of $68.38, implying about 34% upside on the analyst consensus — though the spread between the $60 floor and $130 ceiling illustrates how wide the range of outcomes is for a pre-revenue company. Traditional valuation metrics (PE and EV/EBITDA are both deeply negative) are noise here; the stock trades on regulatory milestones and contract newsflow. The NRC design-criteria approval, reported today, is exactly the kind of catalyst that drives this story.
The earnings history offers a clear pattern. The two most recent prints both produced negative reactions: the March 24 result saw a 1.8% drop on the day and an 11.9% decline over the following five sessions; the March 17 event produced a 5.0% fall on the day and a 7.9% slide over the week. Neither print was preceded by the degree of short rebuilding or insider selling seen heading into May 12.
The question framing next week's print is less about revenue (there is none) and more about whether Oklo delivers a regulatory and commercial progress update that justifies the 42% rally since early April — or whether a muted update hands the rebuilt short book a reason to press harder.
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