PTC Therapeutics heads into its June 2 earnings report with fresh analyst momentum at its back — and a CEO who has just been selling.
The standout this week is Jefferies, which upgraded PTCT to Buy just today, lifting its target from $76 to $85. That reverses the same firm's downgrade to Hold back in late March. The move adds to a wave of post-earnings analyst optimism: TD Cowen also upgraded to Buy earlier in May, raising its target from $75 to $90, while Wells Fargo raised its Overweight target from $86 to $95 and Morgan Stanley maintained Overweight at $92. The consensus now sits at Buy across six of nine covering analysts, with a mean target of $91.57. At the current price of $67.65, that implies roughly 35% upside — meaningful, though the stock has drifted lower since reporting Q1 results that initially sparked a 10.7% one-day gain on May 7.
Short interest tells a quietly building story. At 12.2% of the free float, bearish positioning is firmly elevated — and it has edged higher over the past month, up roughly 8% in shares short across the last 30 days. The weekly gain of under 1% is modest, but the direction has been consistently upward since early May's step-change, when short shares jumped from around 8.4 million to above 9.6 million in a single week. Despite that, the borrow market is far from stressed. Cost to borrow has fallen sharply — down nearly 27% over the week to just 0.34%, its lowest level in the 30-day window. Availability is exceptionally loose at 1,448%, meaning lenders hold shares equal to roughly 14.5 times current short interest. There is no squeeze pressure here; shorts are rebuilding cheaply into what they see as a difficult setup.
Options positioning reinforces the bullish near-term lean among active traders. The put/call ratio is running at 0.23, well below its 20-day average of 0.30 — about 1.3 standard deviations below the mean — and close to its 52-week low of 0.21. Call volume is dominating, suggesting retail and institutional options flow is tilted toward upside participation rather than hedging. That said, the read cuts both ways: the PCR was consistently above 0.40 through late April and early May, when the stock was recovering. The recent drop in the ratio coincides with the stock fading from its post-earnings high near $79 back toward $67.
The insider activity cuts against the bullish Street narrative. CEO Matthew Klein sold roughly $917,000 worth of stock across multiple transactions on May 14, just a week after the strong earnings-driven pop. Chief Legal Officer Mark Boulding added additional sells around the same time. Combined insider selling over the 90-day window totals approximately $8.1 million in net value. These are not trivial amounts for a stock of this size. The CEO sales came as the stock traded between $72 and $73, meaningfully above today's price — suggesting the executive team viewed the post-earnings rally as an exit opportunity rather than a base for further gains.
June 2 is the next earnings date, and the one prior gave traders plenty to work with: the stock jumped 10.7% the day after the May 7 report and added a further 9.2% over the following five days. The setup heading into June's print is more complex — the stock has since retraced all those gains, short interest has climbed back toward its monthly highs, and options traders are positioned for further upside. What to watch is whether the pipeline data on sepiapterin for PKU and the votoplam programme delivers enough incremental clarity to re-energise the Street's recently renewed bullishness — or whether insider selling near $73 turns out to be the more instructive signal.
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