Dr. Reddy's Laboratories heads into its May 22 earnings release with the lending market flashing its most urgent signal yet — even as options traders refuse to blink.
The borrow story has sharpened materially since yesterday's preview. Availability has collapsed to 33.5%, down from 62.7% just one session earlier and from nearly 88% two weeks ago. That means roughly two shares are now borrowed for every one still available to lend — the tightest the lending pool has been since the 52-week low of 16.8%. Cost to borrow has climbed alongside it, rising 24% over the week to 0.65%. Short interest itself has grown 7.6% in a week to approximately 16.6 million shares, extending a build that began in early May. The ORTEX short score has edged to 55.4, a multi-week high. Taken together, the lending market now reads as notably more congested than at any point during this earnings-preview cycle.
Options traders are not reading the same script. The put/call ratio held near 0.15 on Wednesday — well below its 20-day average of 0.38 and close to the low end of its 52-week range. Call demand continues to dominate flow by a wide margin. The contrast with the PCR readings above 1.10 seen as recently as May 7–8 is stark. That earlier defensive spike has completely unwound, and the current positioning reflects appetite for upside exposure rather than protection. Price action is consistent with that posture: the ADR gained 1.3% on Wednesday and is up nearly 5% on the week to $13.63, recovering the ground lost in the mid-May sell-off.
The institutional ownership picture adds context. The two largest holders — Kallam Reddy and Gunupati Prasad — together control roughly 27% of shares and have not moved their positions since December. BlackRock added around 1.3 million shares through April, and Boston Partners built a position of over 4 million shares in the first quarter. That ownership concentration in stable, long-term hands limits the free float available to the lending market — which may partly explain why availability has tightened so quickly even as short interest growth remains measured rather than extreme. The analyst data on file is too stale to cite meaningfully; the most recent credible action was HSBC's upgrade to Buy with a $16.90 target, reported in June 2025.
Thursday's print will test whether the bullish options positioning reflects genuine fundamental confidence in the quarter — or simply a positioning overshoot in a thinly-traded ADR with a dwindling lending pool.
See the live data behind this article on ORTEX.
Open RDY 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.
