Quantum Computing Inc. heads into Wednesday's Q1 results carrying one of the most aggressive short positions in the market — and a stock that has suddenly caught fire again.
Short sellers have not retreated. At 25.3% of free float, the short position is deeply elevated, and it has barely budged — down just 0.4% on the week and roughly 4% over the past month. That stubborn positioning is backed by a lending market that has nearly run dry. Availability has tightened to near-historic lows, with utilization running at 96%, after briefly reaching 100% — every share in the lending pool fully lent out — just days ago. The cost to borrow has more than doubled over the past month to 2.6% annualised. Together, these readings put QUBT in the bottom 2% of stocks by availability, and rank its short score at 73.6, in the top 1% of all names tracked by ORTEX.
Yet the stock itself tells a different story. QUBT has rallied 44% in a month and 7% in the past week alone, closing at $10.18. That move has not triggered meaningful short covering — it has compressed availability further, squeezing the lenders, not the shorts. Options positioning is mildly bullish rather than fearful. The put/call ratio is 0.69, fractionally above its 20-day average of 0.66, barely one standard deviation above that mean. The setup is not one of defensive hedging — call demand has been steadily outpacing puts across the past two weeks.
The analyst debate is split on direction, though broadly constructive on the longer-term thesis. Northland Capital Markets initiated coverage with an Outperform rating and a $20 target in late April — the most recent action. Rosenblatt maintains a Buy at $22. The bear case rests on a company that is pre-revenue at scale, loss-making, and competing against better-capitalised rivals in IBM and Google as they accelerate their own quantum programmes. The bull case hinges on a proprietary photonics platform, a $1.6 billion cash position, and the build-out of Fab 2, which supporters argue makes commercialisation a genuine medium-term prospect. The mean analyst price target of $17.40 implies significant upside from current levels, though that consensus is stale — struck in mid-March, before the stock's most recent leg higher.
On the institutional side, BlackRock added over 6.2 million shares through April, bringing its stake to 7.4% of shares outstanding. Vanguard added 4.6 million shares. Both moves represent meaningful conviction-building from passive-to-active crossover managers. Set against this, insiders sold steadily into the January-to-March window, with the CFO offloading around $614,000 worth of stock in March at prices between $7.85 and $7.87 — well below the current level.
The print tomorrow will test whether the company can show enough commercial momentum in its photonics pipeline to justify a stock that has re-rated sharply while short sellers, sitting on tight borrow and a two-and-a-half-year high in cost to borrow, have yet to flinch.
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