Bristol-Myers Squibb heads into the back half of May with two competing stories pulling in opposite directions: a strategic AI deal with Anthropic announced today, and the fastest build in short interest the stock has seen in months.
Short sellers have been busy. SI % FF jumped 25% over the past month to 1.82% of the float, with most of that acceleration coming in the last two weeks. The week-on-week increase alone was 14%. At roughly 37 million shares short, the absolute level remains modest — well below what would constitute meaningful crowding — but the rate of change is the real signal here. Something has shifted in bearish conviction since late April, when short interest was running closer to 29 million shares.
That build has not yet been accompanied by tightening in the borrow market. Availability remains extraordinarily loose — the lending pool dwarfs current demand, with available shares running into the billions. Cost to borrow, which spiked 442% over the past week to 0.43%, looks alarming in percentage terms but tells a different story in absolute terms: sub-0.5% is still among the cheapest borrows in the large-cap pharmaceutical space. The week-on-week jump reflects a move from near-zero (0.08% on May 12) rather than any genuine squeeze pressure. Options positioning corroborates the lack of panic — the put/call ratio is 0.88, a shade below its 20-day average of 0.89, with a z-score of -0.39. There is no unusual hedging demand here.
The Street broadly leans constructive. The consensus sits at Buy, with a mean price target around $63 against a close of $58.31 — roughly 8% implied upside. Most of the target-price activity in recent months has been upward revision. Piper Sandler and Barclays both set Overweight ratings earlier this year with targets at $75. B of A trimmed its target modestly to $67 in early April but held its Buy rating. The bears can point to a concrete risk calendar: multiple ADEPT and ACTION-1 readouts are expected in late 2026, and the bear case includes lower-than-consensus revenue and EPS projections through 2028. On valuation, the P/E is running at 9.3x and EV/EBITDA near 8.8x — neither multiple has moved dramatically over the past 30 days, suggesting the stock's 3% one-month pullback reflects macro noise rather than a fundamental re-rating. The dividend score ranks in the 99th percentile, which keeps income-oriented holders anchored in the name.
The most important development this week is the Anthropic deal. BMY announced today that it is deploying Claude Enterprise as a shared intelligence platform across research, clinical development, manufacturing, and commercial functions. The company is framing this as a drug-discovery accelerator. Whether it delivers on that framing over the relevant investment horizon remains to be seen, but it arrives at a moment when AI-pharma partnerships are attracting outsized market attention. The stock is up 1.7% today and 3.3% on the week, the outperformance standing in contrast to close peer MRK, which gained just 1.7% on the week, and PFE, which gave back 0.8%. GSK — BMY's most correlated peer — added only 0.6% over the same period.
The short interest build and the Anthropic deal announcement land on the same day, making the next few sessions worth watching: whether the shorts continue adding or begin to cover in response to the AI-driven positive sentiment is the most immediate tension to track ahead of the July 30 earnings date.
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