Tempus AI reports tomorrow — Wednesday May 21 — and the setup into the print is unusually charged.
Options positioning has turned sharply more defensive than at any point in the past year. The put/call ratio hit 0.676 on Tuesday, more than three standard deviations above its 20-day mean of 0.50, and a new 52-week high. That's a significant leap from where the ratio sat all through April — mostly in the 0.46–0.48 range — and it arrived in a single session, suggesting a rapid repositioning ahead of the release rather than a gradual drift.
Short interest reinforces the cautious picture. About 15–23% of free float is estimated short (the range reflects different float-basis calculations), placing TEM firmly among the more heavily shorted names in life sciences. The position has been relatively stable over the past month — down roughly 4% from its late-April peak but barely moved week-on-week — which tells you shorts are holding their ground rather than covering into earnings. Borrow availability has tightened meaningfully this week, dropping to around 28% from 49% just ten days ago. That's a real tightening: for every share currently borrowed, barely a quarter of a share remains available in the lending pool. Cost to borrow, at 0.93%, has risen about 8% over the week, though in absolute terms it remains low — the squeeze risk here is availability, not cost.
The stock closed Tuesday at $45.53, up 4.4% on the day but still down 3% on the week and off 18.5% over the past month. That monthly loss follows Q1 results on May 5, which sent shares down 4% on the day and nearly 16% over the five subsequent sessions — the clearest data point for what the market has recently done with TEM earnings prints. Correlated peers had a mixed week: RGEN and PSNL both posted solid single-session gains Tuesday, while DNA and PACB fell 12% and 10% respectively on the week, suggesting the broader life-sciences-tools complex is under its own pressure.
The catalyst backdrop ahead of the print has actually been constructive. Tempus expanded its clinical-trial partnership with Bristol-Myers Squibb this month, building on a real-world data and AI collaboration that analysts have flagged as a sign the company's pharma relationships are deepening. TD Cowen lifted its target to $68 after the BMS announcement. But the net analyst message this month is one of reassessment rather than conviction: HC Wainwright cut its target from $95 to $64 on May 11, BTIG trimmed from $90 to $80 on May 8, and the mean target across the Street now stands at $67.20 — implying roughly 48% upside from current levels but representing a meaningful deflation from the targets in place just three months ago. Jefferies initiated in mid-April with an Underperform and a $35 target, the lone openly bearish voice in a consensus that remains tilted toward Buy. The bear case centres on revenue visibility, path to profitability, and the competitive dynamics of the lab-developed-test market; the bull case rests on the stickiness of pharma partnerships and the AI-data-platform narrative.
Founder and CEO Eric Lefkofsky sold approximately $8.5 million of stock in late April across multiple transactions, all priced in the $51–$52 range — well above where the stock trades today. Those sales follow a similar cluster in late March at roughly $46–$47. The 90-day net insider position shows a net addition of around 561,000 shares, which is almost entirely attributable to Lefkofsky's reported ownership increase — likely option exercises — rather than open-market buying. The selling cadence is systematic rather than alarming, but it is consistent and has been executed into every meaningful price rally this year. ARK Investment Management added over 2 million shares through April, and BlackRock added 1.45 million, providing some institutional counterweight; but neither move changes the insider-selling context heading into a high-volatility print.
The ORTEX short score of 72.9 ranks TEM in roughly the 8th percentile by short-score rank, flagging it as one of the more shorted and borrow-constrained names in the universe. EPS surprise scores at the 95th percentile — Tempus has consistently beaten consensus estimates — but EPS momentum over 30 days ranks in the 22nd percentile, meaning forward estimate revisions have been moving lower. The tension between a strong beat history and softening forward expectations is precisely what makes tomorrow's guidance commentary the crux of the release: the market already knows the company can beat a quarter; what it wants to know is whether the revenue ramp from pharma partnerships is accelerating or still being deferred.
What to watch beyond the headline numbers: the trajectory of genomic sequencing volumes, any update on the BMS collaboration's financial terms, and whether management raises, holds, or trims full-year guidance — the last print saw no meaningful upward revision, and that gap between beat and guide was what drove the 16% five-day slide.
See the live data behind this article on ORTEX.
Open TEM on ORTEX →ORTEX Market Intelligence content is generated by AI from a snapshot of ORTEX's proprietary data. Content is informational only and does not constitute investment advice.
