SentinelOne heads into its May 28 earnings report having just posted the best weekly performance in months — yet with short sellers barely flinching and analysts still sitting largely on the sidelines.
The stock gained 12.2% this week to close at $17.66, and is up 26% over the past month. That recovery is sharp enough to put the stock within striking distance of the mean analyst price target of $18.59. The rally has tracked closely with the broader cybersecurity space: close peers CRWD gained 12.9% on the week and ZS surged nearly 20%, suggesting sector tailwinds rather than a SentinelOne-specific catalyst are doing most of the work.
Despite the price move, positioning in the lending market is notably relaxed. Borrow availability has expanded alongside the rally, now running at over 1,260% — meaning roughly 12 shares remain available to borrow for every one already short. That is well off the tighter levels seen in mid-April, when availability briefly dipped below 1,000%. Cost to borrow is a near-negligible 0.41%, down 12% on the week, confirming there is no pressure on lenders to restrict supply. Short interest itself is flat: 7.5% of the float, essentially unchanged over the past week, having crept up about 9% over the past month. That monthly build is worth watching — shorts have been quietly adding — but the overall level is not extreme. Options traders have also turned bullish. The put/call ratio has dropped to 0.17, near its 52-week low of 0.16 and well below the 52-week high of 0.38. Call volume is dominant heading into the print.
The Street's posture is cautious-but-not-bearish. Barclays this morning raised its target from $16 to $19 while keeping an Equal-Weight rating — the move acknowledges the rally but stops short of endorsing further upside from here. The post-Q4 cluster in March told a similar story: Goldman, JPMorgan, UBS, Piper Sandler, and Scotiabank all trimmed targets after the last print, while Oppenheimer and Stephens maintained Outperform/Overweight calls with targets around $18. The net result is a consensus that is modestly constructive — the mean target at $18.59 implies only 5% upside at current prices, leaving little analytical cushion. The bull case rests on 20% revenue growth, multi-product expansion on the Singularity platform, and strong forward EPS revision momentum — the 90-day EPS momentum factor ranks in the 86th percentile. Bears point to five consecutive quarters of gross margin contraction and a fresh guide implying operating margins fall roughly 390 basis points quarter-on-quarter in Q1 FY27, alongside intensifying pressure from Microsoft and CrowdStrike.
One notable ownership data point: CEO and founder Tomer Weingarten sold approximately $3.9M of stock in early May at prices in the $15.30–$15.65 range. That activity is on a pre-arranged plan and the significance scores are low, but the timing — into the rally, ahead of earnings — is worth noting. On the institutional side, AQR added over 11 million shares in Q1, a substantial build, while Millennium added nearly 5.9 million. Both are quantitative or multi-strategy shops, suggesting factor-driven rather than conviction-driven accumulation.
The setup for May 28 is therefore: call-heavy options book, a market-price-to-target spread that has nearly closed, a stock that has recovered sharply on sector momentum, and a short base that has grown modestly but remains far from stressed. The question for the print will be whether gross margins show any stabilisation — that is the single metric with the most power to shift the analyst consensus in either direction.
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