Tempest Therapeutics heads into a complex moment: the Q1 print has already landed, and it's a miss — but the stock rose 13.6% the day before, and short sellers have been trimming exposure throughout.
The headline print is ugly. Q1 adjusted EPS came in at -$0.50, well below the -$0.28 estimate. With zero revenue and an annualised net loss running near $20 million, the company remains a pure clinical-stage bet. Operating cash burn reached $14.4 million for the period. The 10-Q filed yesterday and an 8-K accompanied the release, confirming this is a substantive update rather than a placeholder.
Yet the short-side signal tells a less bearish story than the financials might suggest. Short interest has fallen roughly 9% over the past week to 9.3% of the free float — still meaningful for a micro-cap biotech, but down significantly from peaks above 12% seen in early April. The borrow market is relatively relaxed: cost to borrow runs near 4.9%, roughly where it has been for weeks, and availability has eased materially from the tight levels of six to eight weeks ago, when the 52-week high in lending utilisation reached 94%. That squeeze pressure has largely dissipated.
The ownership picture adds an interesting wrinkle. CEO Matthew Angel holds 33.7% of shares — an unusually concentrated insider stake. In March he added another 231,000 shares at $2.16 for approximately $500,000, the most recent of several open-market purchases by company insiders near current price levels. That concentration cuts both ways: it limits the tradeable float, but it also signals that the person closest to the clinical programme was buying near where the stock trades today.
The analyst consensus, from HC Wainwright, carries a Buy and an $11 price target — a very large implied premium to the $2.09 close. That target was set in January and should be treated with caution given how much can change in clinical-stage oncology in a few months. The EPS surprise factor score ranks in the 83rd percentile, reflecting a track record of results landing well outside expectations, in either direction.
Recent earnings reactions underscore the volatility. The April 2026 event saw a +1.3% day-one move followed by a 36% gain over five days. The January 2026 print went the other way: down 3.8% on day one and down nearly 17% over the following week. The stock has already moved sharply into today's release, which means the print is less about the loss per share — widely anticipated — and more about whether any clinical update on the dual-targeting CAR-T platform, presented at ISCT earlier this month, changes the narrative around timelines and cash runway.
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