Telix Pharmaceuticals heads into its May 21 results with one of the most contested short books in Australian biotech — and a CEO who has been quietly buying into the weakness.
Short sellers remain heavily positioned. Short interest runs near 15.3% of the free float, a high reading by any standard, and while it has eased modestly over the past week (down roughly 2.8%), it has expanded by more than 5% over the prior month. The ORTEX short score — a composite of lending pressure, flow dynamics and positioning — holds at 85.1, ranking TLX in the 1st percentile of all covered stocks. That is not a marginal reading; it reflects sustained, structurally large bearish positioning. Availability has loosened slightly to around 71.5%, meaning the borrow pool is not yet under stress, but cost to borrow is elevated relative to market norms at 5.6%. Notably, that cost has fallen sharply in the past week — down roughly 40% — after spending most of April and early May above 9-10%. The easing in borrow cost, alongside the small decline in shares short, hints that some of the most aggressive short positions are being trimmed ahead of the event rather than added to.
The CEO's recent activity sharpens the contrast with the short positioning. Founder and Chief Executive Christian Behrenbruch bought approximately 68,000 shares across two sessions in late April at prices around AUD 14.48–14.87, committing roughly USD 712,000. That follows a large sell in February 2025 — when he offloaded 2 million shares near AUD 29.50 — but the recent purchases come at less than half that price, and they are the only insider buys logged in the past 12 months. JPMorgan and State Street are the two largest institutional holders outside of management, together controlling nearly 19% of the register, and both added meaningfully to their positions in recent filings.
The bull case rests heavily on earnings momentum. EPS estimates have moved sharply upward — TLX ranks in the 93rd to 94th percentile on both 30-day and 90-day forward EPS momentum — and the analyst consensus price target of AUD 23.34 implies roughly 59% upside from the current close of AUD 14.72. That is a wide gap, and it reflects genuine optimism about the company's radiopharmaceutical pipeline rather than stale targets: the consensus was last updated in early May. Bears counter with valuation: the stock trades on a trailing PE above 270x and an EV/EBITDA near 51x, multiples that demand sustained execution and leave little room for disappointment. The Feb 2026 earnings release produced a 17.5% single-day gain and a 14.9% five-day move — evidence that the stock can re-rate sharply when results land ahead of expectations. The most recent quarterly update in April, however, produced only a modest -1.6% reaction before recovering, suggesting the market's response is highly sensitive to the specifics of each release.
Thursday's print will therefore test whether the earnings momentum story — so strongly priced into analyst targets and forward estimates — holds against a valuation multiple that already prices in a great deal of the expected growth.
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