Perspective Therapeutics walks into tonight's Q1 earnings call with short sellers in an unusually aggressive posture — and the stock down 13% over the past month to $3.88.
Short interest has climbed sharply. At nearly 18.6% of the free float, the position has grown 25% in a single month. The latest daily reading of 13.86 million shares is the highest in the 30-day window. Availability has tightened alongside that buildup, yet borrowing costs remain modest at 0.50% — suggesting shorts are accumulating steadily rather than scrambling for borrow. ORTEX's short score has risen to 74.0, up from 64.2 ten days ago, placing the stock in the bottom 7th percentile for short interest rank among its peers. Days to cover of roughly 8.4 reinforce how entrenched the bearish position has become.
Options, by contrast, tell a less alarmed story. The put/call ratio of 0.18 is above its 20-day average of 0.11 — a modest step toward caution — but well below the 52-week high of 0.76. The z-score of 1.1 is elevated but not extreme. That divergence is notable: options traders are hedging incrementally, not defensively piling into puts the way the short book's size might suggest they would.
The analyst community is broadly bullish, though the conviction gap between targets and price is wide. Wedbush (Outperform, $11) and BTIG (Buy, $14) both reiterated this month ahead of results. HC Wainwright, B. Riley, and UBS raised targets in March following what appears to have been a positive catalyst, with UBS now at $8 and B. Riley at $13. RBC cut its target to $14 from $18 in mid-March while keeping Outperform, a mild tempering of enthusiasm. The mean analyst target of $13 against a current price of $3.88 implies over 200% upside on consensus — a gap that reflects the binary, pipeline-driven nature of the story rather than near-term earnings power. Bulls point to the company's alpha-particle therapy platform using Lead-212, a differentiated mechanism with clinical data the company calls compelling. Bears flag limited near-term revenue, heavy cash burn (operating outflow near $26 million quarterly), and dependence on partnerships to reach commercialization.
Institutional ownership shows some notable moves. TCG Crossover, Qatar Holding, Commodore Capital, and Avidity Partners each appear as new or significantly expanded positions in early 2026 filings — together representing roughly 25% of shares outstanding. That kind of concentrated specialist-biotech accumulation at low prices alongside the company's net cash position of around $283 million offers a structural floor argument. The prior two earnings prints saw the stock fall 5.2% and 1.6% on the day, recovering modestly over the following five sessions in both cases.
Tonight's report is less a financial inflection point and more a clinical progress check — the market will be testing whether pipeline updates and cash-burn guidance justify the conviction embedded in those institutional positions against the equally firm conviction of a short book now at its heaviest level in months.
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