RBRK enters the week before its June 3 earnings with the Street freshly onside and options traders the most bullish on the stock in over a year — a setup that contrasts with short sellers who have quietly added to positions even as the price rallied 6.4% on the week.
The most striking signal this week is the options market. The put/call ratio collapsed to 0.28 on Tuesday — the lowest reading in the past 52 weeks and nearly three standard deviations below its 20-day average of 0.45. That is not a hedge-trimming story; it is an active accumulation of calls, pointing to concentrated demand for upside exposure as the next earnings date draws near.
Short interest tells a more cautious counterpoint. Shorts added modestly to their position this week, with SI % of free float edging up from roughly 8.0% to 8.3% — a 3.2% week-on-week rise in shares short. The 30-day trend is softer, down around 5% from April's highs above 9%, but the intra-week rebuild means bears have not been flushed out by the price rally. Borrow remains extraordinarily cheap at 0.45%, and availability is a comfortable 664% — there are roughly six-and-a-half shares available for every one currently shorted. The lending market offers no friction to new short sellers, which partly explains why the position hasn't collapsed despite a stock up 23% over the past month.
Oppenheimer upgraded RBRK to Outperform with an $85 target on Wednesday — the freshest and most directionally significant analyst action in recent weeks. The call aligns with a consensus that is unusually concentrated: 26 buy ratings, zero holds, and a mean target of $84.43 against a current price of $64.33, implying roughly 31% upside. Valuation multiples have been compressing as the price rallied into the upgrade — the EV/EBITDA multiple has fallen 32 points over the past 30 days, and the earnings yield has drifted lower — though both remain stretched for a company still working toward profitability. On factor scores, RBRK ranks in the 98th percentile on analyst recommendation divergence and the 93rd percentile on EPS surprise, meaning the Street has been consistently too cautious and the company has consistently beaten.
The ownership picture adds texture to the bull case. FMR (Fidelity) added nearly 2.9 million shares in Q1, one of the larger incremental buys in the holder table. PointState Capital and Pictet Asset Management each added over 1.5 million shares in the same period. The co-founders — Bipul Sinha and Arvind Jain — remain large holders at roughly 5.5% each. On the sell side, the only recent insider activity came from the Lead Independent Director and the CFO in April and early May, routine-sized sales at significance scores of just 2 out of 10, not a pattern that raises flags.
Earnings history here is worth noting. The last two prints produced a 7.1% one-day decline and a 4.4% one-day decline respectively, with five-day moves of -11.5% and -8.8%. The market has punished results events even when numbers came in ahead of consensus. With the June 3 date now two weeks out, the aggressive call-buying looks like a bet that the pattern breaks — but the history of post-earnings selling is a live risk for anyone building long exposure into the event. The short score has risen steadily this week, climbing from 48.1 to 49.9, moving closer to the midpoint of its 0–100 scale without signalling extreme pressure in either direction.
Peer performance adds context. IOT gained 9.6% on the week and NOW rose 14.4%, both outpacing RBRK's 6.4% move. ORCL and CDNS both lost ground. The setup into June 3 is therefore one to watch closely: bullish analyst momentum and historically extreme call positioning on one side, a persistent short base and a track record of post-earnings weakness on the other.
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