Rigetti Computing enters its June 9 earnings window with a sharp tension at its core: the stock just posted a 31% single-session gain, yet short sellers have been quietly adding to positions throughout May, and the next print is fewer than three weeks away.
The price action this week is striking. RGTI closed at $22.04 on May 21, up 30.6% on the day and 14.4% on the week. That single-day move is the loudest signal in the dataset. Yet the stock is only back near levels it traded at in January — a reminder of how far it has fallen from the highs short sellers originally entered against.
The positioning story is where things get complicated. Short interest has climbed steadily through May, reaching 15.9% of the free float — up roughly 1.1 percentage points from late April lows near 14.7%. That represents over 52 million shares short. Shorts have been adding into weakness and appear unprepared for a move of Thursday's magnitude. On the borrow side, however, the market looks relaxed: cost to borrow is just 0.70% annualised, and availability — at 104% of short interest — means there is still roughly one share available to borrow for every share currently on loan. Neither metric suggests a borrow-driven squeeze is imminent. Options sentiment has shifted modestly in the bulls' favour. The put/call ratio has eased to 0.92, running about 1.3 standard deviations below its 20-day average of 0.98, indicating calls are gaining ground relative to puts. That is a mild rotation, not an extreme, but the direction is consistent with the week's price action.
The Street remains broadly constructive, if less enthusiastically so than earlier in the year. The most recent action came from Mizuho on May 12, where analyst Vijay Rakesh maintained an Outperform rating but trimmed the target from $33 to $27 — a meaningful cut that partly reflects the post-Q1 recalibration. Needham held its Buy rating and $31 target on the same date. The consensus mean target sits at $29.24, implying roughly 33% upside from current levels. The bull case centres on Rigetti's chiplet architecture, its path to 1,000+ qubits, and a patent portfolio that makes it a plausible acquisition candidate. Bears point to the company's persistent losses, high cash burn, and the risk that a competing qubit technology — superconducting, trapped ion, photonic — ultimately captures the market. Valuation multiples are hard to use cleanly here: P/B has expanded to 15x on the back of the recent price rally, and both the P/E and EV/EBITDA readings are negative given the company's pre-profitability status. EPS-surprise and momentum factor scores are constructive at 82nd and mid-60s percentile respectively, but quality remains challenged — consistent with the bear case narrative.
Institutional positioning has attracted some notable new entrants. D. E. Shaw added over 10.4 million shares in the quarter to March, bringing its stake to 4.2% of the company. Citadel built a position of roughly 6.2 million shares from near-zero, and Jane Street similarly initiated a position of 3.8 million shares in Q1. Susquehanna also added 11 million shares in the same period. These are largely quantitative and multi-strategy names rather than fundamental long-only funds, which is consistent with a stock driven as much by momentum and volatility as by fundamental conviction. Vanguard and BlackRock remain the top two holders at 11% and 7.7% respectively, with modest incremental additions through April.
The last earnings release on May 11 produced a near-flat one-day reaction (+0.7%) but a 12% decline over the subsequent five sessions — a reminder that initial prints can look benign while the real damage comes days later. The prior report in February saw a 5.7% day-one drop. With the ORTEX short score at 65 and short interest near a six-week high, any renewed softness in the quantum narrative, or a miss on revenue or cash runway guidance, gives the elevated short base fresh ammunition to press. The June 9 print is therefore less about whether Rigetti has made technical progress — on gate fidelity metrics, it has — and more about whether management can articulate a credible timeline to reducing the cash burn that defines the bear case.
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