TOMI Environmental Solutions heads into its May 12 earnings report with the sharpest short-interest build in its recent history — and a stock that has simultaneously surged 45% in a month.
The short-selling activity is the defining tension of this setup. Short interest as a percentage of free float jumped to 3.4% — a level that, on its own, is modest. But the pace of that move is not. Estimated short shares climbed more than 650% over the past month, from roughly 93,000 shares in early April to nearly 692,000 by May 7. The bulk of that build happened in a tight window: shorts went from around 54,000 shares on April 22 to more than 937,000 by May 4, before pulling back slightly. That is a ten-fold expansion in under two weeks. Borrow costs have moved in parallel — cost to borrow has doubled over the past month to roughly 14.5%, and is up nearly 29% just in the last week. Availability in the lending market has tightened considerably as a result, consistent with that surge in demand for borrows.
Yet the stock has not cooperated with the short thesis. TOMZ closed at $0.824 on May 8, up 16% on the day, 19% on the week, and 45% over the past month. The ORTEX short score has eased from a recent peak near 62 on April 30 to 56.4 — still elevated in absolute terms, but the direction of travel suggests some short pressure is unwinding rather than building further. The combination of a fast-moving short position and a rising stock price is a classic friction point: shorts added exposure into a rally, and the squeeze risk — while not extreme given the modest float percentage — is real enough to be worth watching.
The analyst picture offers little new information going into the print. HC Wainwright has maintained a Buy rating and a $3.50 price target for several years without change — the most recent action on record dates to April 2025, making the coverage effectively stale for near-term trading purposes. The $3.50 target implies substantial upside from the current $0.82 price, but investors should treat that figure as a long-dated orientation rather than a fresh view. The company's EPS surprise rank is exceptional — in the 97th percentile of the universe — which means it has a strong track record of beating expectations when it does report, though for a micro-cap environmental services name, beat rates can be driven by the low bar of minimal analyst coverage.
The earnings report will test whether the operational momentum that appears to have drawn short interest into the stock — perhaps as a fade of recent speculative buying — has any fundamental basis, or whether the quarter gives the rally a tangible reason to hold.
See the live data behind this article on ORTEX.
Open TOMZ on ORTEX →ORTEX Market Intelligence content is generated by AI from a snapshot of ORTEX's proprietary data. Content is informational only and does not constitute investment advice.
