Outlook Therapeutics heads into its May 14 results carrying a short position that has exploded from the fringes to become a defining feature of the stock.
The short build is the standout heading into today's print. Short interest has climbed from roughly 2.6% of the free float in early April to 8.3% — a 310% increase over the past month — making this a materially more contested stock than it was just six weeks ago. The weekly rate of change alone tells the story: shorts rose 27% in the past five trading days alone, even after a brief 10% pullback on May 12. That pace of accumulation in a sub-$0.25 stock with a $0.23 close — down 5% on the last session and 8% over the past month — reflects active directional pressure, not passive drift.
The borrow market is supportive of that pressure, but not extreme. Cost to borrow runs at 8.5%, down from a peak above 13% in early April. Availability remains comfortable, meaning bears have not exhausted the lending pool. The ORTEX short score of 63.5 reflects elevated but not maximum bearish signal strength, and the stock sits in only the 14th percentile by short score rank — meaning roughly 86% of the universe scores higher on short conviction. Availability is not yet a constraint for new short positions.
Options positioning runs sharply in the other direction, though the market here is thin. The put/call ratio has fallen to 0.08, well below its 20-day average of 0.10 and near the lowest reading of the past year (52-week low: 0.05). The negative z-score of -1.1 signals call-side dominance. That divergence — aggressive short selling against options positioning that leans bullish — is the central tension heading into the print.
The analyst picture offers little comfort for either side. The mean price target of $4.17 sits roughly 18x above the current price, which almost certainly reflects the stale nature of the most recent consensus data (last updated March 30). The most recent individual moves, from Ascendiant Capital in mid-March, cut the Buy target from $10 to $6. Two Neutral-rated analysts maintained targets of $0.50 and $1.00 after the February print. The bear case centres on the FDA's Complete Response Letter for ONS-5010, a likely requirement for an additional 9-12 month study, limited cash runway, and dilution risk. The bull case rests on the EU launch of LYTENAVA in the UK and Germany, where early commercial traction could reset the narrative — but the company needs financing to get there, and every quarter spent waiting increases the dilution math.
Past earnings prints have been uniformly negative. The last four events produced average one-day moves of -9.4% and five-day moves of -11.6%, with the February 17 event alone delivering a 16% one-day drop and a further 16% over the following week. The earnings release this afternoon tests whether the EU commercial story has generated enough momentum to break that pattern — or whether the short sellers who have tripled their exposure since April have read the setup correctly.
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