RKLB arrives at its May 20 earnings print having almost doubled its share price in a month — and a director just pocketed $11.8 million on the way up.
Director Alexander Slusky sold 100,000 shares across four tranches on May 12, averaging around $118–$120 per share, days after the stock hit a multi-year high near $132. That $11.8 million sale is the single most prominent insider signal heading into the print. No insider buying offset it. Net insider activity over the past 90 days runs to roughly $24.6 million in net selling — a notable one-way flow that the market noticed immediately. The stock fell 5.9% on May 15 following the disclosure, trimming a 18% weekly gain that itself followed a 73% monthly run.
Options traders have grown more cautious in tandem. The put/call ratio has climbed to its highest reading of the past year at 0.83, running nearly 1.7 standard deviations above its 20-day average of 0.78. That is a meaningful shift toward downside protection relative to where this stock spent most of the past several months. The hedging pattern tightened precisely as the insider selling hit the tape — a coincidence worth noting.
Short sellers are not piling in, however. Short interest at 5.7% of free float has fallen sharply over the past week — down nearly 12% — reversing a build-up from late April when SI climbed toward 6.5%. The borrow market is loose: cost to borrow runs below 0.4%, and availability is ample. The ORTEX short score has declined steadily from 43.5 on May 4 to 39 on May 14, signaling that the bearish short-selling setup is cooling even as the price has surged. Bears who tried to lean into this rally have been retreating, not doubling down.
The fundamental backdrop is genuinely unusual for a company at this price. Revenue consensus sits near $909 million on a forward basis, but Rocket Lab carries a negative EBITDA and a negative $151 million net income estimate. The EV/revenue multiple is an eye-watering 76x. Bulls point to the $2.2 billion backlog, a recently announced multi-launch contract, and defense-sector tailwinds that have propelled peers LUNR and RDW higher — RDW is up 27% on the week alone. The company also ranks in the 92nd percentile on EPS surprise history, suggesting it has consistently beaten the numbers put in front of it. Bears focus on the same valuation math: at 76x forward revenue, there is almost no room for anything other than perfect execution, and the momentum score — while strong at 81st percentile — abruptly collapsed from above 80 to the low 60s in early May before snapping back, suggesting fragility underneath the surface.
The May 20 print will test whether a $2.2 billion backlog and a defense-driven growth narrative can hold a valuation that has raced far ahead of any conventional earnings metric — or whether Slusky's well-timed exit signals that the easy money has already been made.
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