LRMR heads into its Q1 2026 earnings today having shed more than a quarter of its value in a month — and short sellers have been adding to their positions throughout the slide.
Bears have been busy. Short interest climbed 17% over the past week alone, reaching nearly 10% of the free float. That's a meaningful positioning shift into a clinical-stage biotech reporting results the same day. The ORTEX short score has drifted higher to 54.5, up from the low 51s at the start of the month, reflecting this rising short-side pressure. Cost to borrow jumped sharply to 1.1% — more than four times the prior-week level — though it remains low in absolute terms for a name this small. Availability is ample at roughly 535%, meaning the lending pool is far from strained. The options market offers a mild counterpoint: the put/call ratio of 0.25 is modestly above its 20-day average but only about one standard deviation above the norm, suggesting options traders are not aggressively hedging into the print relative to the surge in short positions.
The bull and bear cases hinge almost entirely on the CTI-1601 data. Bulls point to a striking improvement in median skin frataxin expression — rising from 2.7 pg/ug at baseline to 13.44 pg/ug after six months, well above healthy volunteer levels — and a -2.20 point improvement on the mFARS scale versus a +1.00 point worsening in the natural history population. Wedbush maintained its Outperform rating as recently as yesterday, though Laura Chico trimmed her target to $12 from $13 after the stock's recent decline. The analyst consensus targets roughly $15.88 against a $3.58 close, implying a 343% return potential — a gap that reflects both genuine clinical optimism and the market's deep skepticism about whether efficacy data will translate into regulatory and commercial success. Bears are focused on a downward revision to FY29 revenue estimates, cut from $659 million to $407 million, and on what they see as ambiguity in the clinical effectiveness picture.
The ownership structure is worth noting. Deerfield Management holds 34% of shares outstanding and added 5 million shares in Q1. Several specialist biotech funds — Driehaus, Aigh Capital, Deep Track, and Soleus — all built new or expanded positions in the March quarter. On the insider side, James Flynn and a cluster of directors purchased shares at $5.00 in late February, totalling over $25 million in net buys across the 90-day window. That level of conviction at a price meaningfully above current levels is an unusual signal, though the stock has since traded back through that level as the broader slide continued. The RSI has dropped to 30.9, technically oversold territory, and LRMR is lagging most of its correlated peers: CLDX fell 7.7% on the week, CDIO dropped 15%, and VIR eased 3.6%, suggesting the sector backdrop is soft — though none matches Larimar's one-month drawdown of 26%.
The print is less about quarterly financials and more about whether the CTI-1601 dataset continues to support the clinical thesis that brought specialist buyers in at higher prices.
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