Shorts are piling into LRMR at the fastest pace in months. Short interest has climbed 17.2% in a single week to 9.9% of free float. Wedbush trimmed its price target the same morning. Earnings land tomorrow.
8.5 million shares are now short. That's up from 7.3 million just one week ago — a gain of over a million shares in five trading days. The monthly change is nearly identical: +17.9%. The direction is unambiguous.
Days to cover sits at 7.01, based on the latest FINRA data. That's a meaningful overhang for a small-cap biotech trading at $3.58.
The ORTEX short score has risen steadily from 50.9 on May 1 to 53.8 today. Not extreme — but the move is consistent and accelerating.
The cost to borrow jumped to 1.11% on May 15 — up from 0.29% the prior day. That's a 357% spike in a single session. For context, CTB had ranged between 0.24% and 0.60% for the entire prior month.
Availability remains normal at 535%, meaning there is no structural squeeze in the lending pool. This is new demand, not a supply crunch. Shorts are paying more because more of them want in.
Wedbush analyst Laura Chico lowered her price target to $12 from $13 on May 18. She kept the Outperform rating. The mean analyst target across all coverage is $15.88 — against a current price of $3.58. That gap is striking, but it reflects deep uncertainty about the CTI-1601 clinical path, not near-term upside conviction.
The bear case centers on revised revenue estimates for FY29 cut from $659 million to $407 million. The bull case points to frataxin expression data — median FXN rising from 2.7 to 13.44 pg/ug — and a -2.20 point mFARS improvement versus the natural history benchmark.
The shareholder register tells a split story. Deerfield Management holds 34.1% of shares, adding 5 million shares in Q1. Driehaus Capital added nearly 2.4 million shares. Deep Track and Soleus Capital both built new positions.
Against that: Millennium Management trimmed by 1.6 million shares. RTW Investments cut by 1.6 million. Point72 reduced its position by 413,000 shares.
Heavy insider buying in February — James Flynn of Deerfield bought over $25 million of stock at $5.00 — sits well above today's $3.58 close.
Tomorrow's earnings (May 19) are the near-term catalyst. The last print on May 14 sent the stock down 12.7% on the day. Options sentiment is call-heavy — the PCR stands at 0.21, below its 20-day mean of 0.22 — suggesting the options market is not positioned defensively despite rising short interest.
See the live data behind this article on ORTEX.
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