PSNL is up 16.6% in a week and call buyers have flooded the options market — yet short sellers are adding, not covering, and the Street is trimming targets post-earnings.
Options positioning has swung to one of its most aggressively bullish readings of the past year. The put/call ratio dropped to 0.10, nearly two standard deviations below its 20-day average of 0.27. That's the second-lowest PCR reading in 52 weeks — a level that signals call buyers have overwhelmed put demand almost entirely. The move is sharp and sudden: for most of April and early May, the PCR was running steady in the 0.29–0.33 range before collapsing in the wake of the Q1 earnings release.
Short interest tells a completely different story. Bears have grown their positions into the rally, not cut them. SI % FF has climbed to 14.9% — up 15% over the past month — and the ORTEX short score holds at 75.6, near a 10-day high, ranking in the 6th percentile across the universe. That means PSNL carries heavier bearish lending-market pressure than 94% of stocks. Days to cover is 5.8 per FINRA data, a number that matters in a name this small. Cost to borrow jumped to 1.08%, up 57% on the week — still modest in absolute terms, but the direction is clear. Availability has eased to 83%, up from the sub-50% levels seen in mid-April, so the borrow pool is not yet constrained. The lending market is tightening at the margins, but a supply squeeze is not imminent.
The Street trimmed targets after the Q1 print without abandoning the bull thesis. Morgan Stanley's Tejas Savant lowered his target to $9 from $10, maintaining Equal-Weight. BTIG's Mark Massaro cut to $11 from $13, keeping a Buy. The consensus mean target is $10.86 — roughly 54% above the current price of $7.04 — and the majority of active coverage remains constructive. Bulls point to Medicare coverage for the NeXT Personal MRD test in breast and lung cancer, established pharma partnerships, and a path to cash-flow break-even by 2027–2028. Bears flag immature test ASPs, the unresolved question of broader reimbursement coverage, and competitive pressure in the base genomics business. The price-to-book is 4.2x, up 0.6x over 30 days as the stock has recovered — not cheap for a loss-making name, but the EV/EBITDA is negative, reflecting the pre-profitability reality.
Ownership reinforces the bifurcated picture. Deep Track Capital filed a new 5.5% position as of May 5, representing 5.76 million shares added from zero — a meaningful vote of confidence from a specialist healthcare fund. ARK Investment Management added modestly in April. On the other side, the two largest holders — Merck (13.4%) and Tempus AI (12.5%) — showed no change in recent filings. Tempus AI has been a consistent open-market buyer at lower prices (December 2025, averaging around $8–$9), and its current cost basis is now below the prevailing price, a dynamic worth watching if the stock continues to rise.
The Q1 print itself was the catalyst: the stock jumped 10.6% on May 12 and added 21.8% over the following five days. The prior Q earnings event in early May produced a modest 1-day decline of 1.5% but recovered 10.5% over the next five sessions. The pattern has been consistent — initial selling absorbed quickly, followed by multi-day recoveries. The next earnings event is flagged for August 5, giving roughly eleven weeks for the current positioning dynamic to play out.
What matters from here is whether short sellers — who have added 15% to their position in a month despite a rally — begin to cover, or whether the cost of carry at 1.08% remains low enough to sustain the bet. Deep Track's new stake and the options market's call-heavy skew are the clearest counterweights to that bearish conviction.
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