Erasca enters the final week of May caught between two conflicting forces — a stock that has been halved in a month yet carries a sell-side consensus pointing to roughly 77% upside from here.
The price action tells the bleaker story first. ERAS closed Tuesday at $11.50, up 11% on the week and recovering some ground after a brutal slide from its March peak near $22. That 46% one-month drop has left the stock deep underwater relative to where analysts were writing targets. The mean Street price target is $20.30, roughly in line with the current price-to-book of 6.3x — but with the stock trading at a loss, conventional multiples offer little anchor. The EPS and EV/EBITDA readings are both deeply negative, as expected for a clinical-stage biotech burning cash ahead of any revenue. What that $20-plus consensus does tell you is that the Street has not walked away. Mizuho trimmed its target to $26 from $28 in mid-May while keeping its Outperform — the most recent action in the data — and earlier moves from Stifel, JP Morgan and Guggenheim were all in the raising direction. The direction of analyst travel over the past three months has been overwhelmingly bullish; the only concession this week was a small trim, not a downgrade.
The short positioning is meaningful but not extreme for a name in binary clinical development. Short interest runs at roughly 15.3% of free float — a more accurate picture than the headline figure in the snapshot, which uses an older float estimate. That level has actually drifted lower from a peak above 16% in late April, then briefly re-accelerated to 15.6% mid-week before easing back. The month-on-month change is a modest net increase of around 4%. Crucially, the borrow market is not under any stress: availability is 735%, meaning roughly seven shares remain available for every one already lent. Cost to borrow is 0.56% annualised — essentially free money to hold a short. With days-to-cover at 6.7 and borrow this loose, there is no mechanical squeeze pressure building in the lending market.
Options traders are, if anything, leaning bullish. The put/call ratio is 0.30, slightly below its 20-day average of 0.32 and sitting modestly below the neutral line by roughly 0.8 standard deviations. That is not a crowd rushing to hedge — calls continue to dominate the options flow. The 52-week PCR range runs from near zero to 0.36, so the current reading is in the middle-to-low tier, confirming that options positioning has been tilted toward upside for some time, even as the stock pulled back sharply.
The ownership picture adds an interesting layer. Several institutional investors built new positions or meaningfully expanded in Q1: RTW Investments entered with over 16 million shares, Paradigm Biocapital added 13 million, T. Rowe Price added nearly 7 million, and BlackRock added 4.5 million. That cluster of fresh institutional accumulation — largely at prices well above where the stock trades now — sits alongside the insider record, which shows the General Counsel sold $1.3 million in early April at $16.40. Those sales were at prices the stock has since retreated below, raising the question of whether the recent dip is a reset or a re-rating. The CEO and founder, Jonathan Lim, remains the largest individual holder with 10.4% of shares and has not added at the current lower levels in the available data.
Looking ahead to the next print, ERAS's earnings history gives a mixed template. The last four events produced moves of -0.96%, +2.57%, -6.16%, and -12.1% on day one — the only consistent pattern is that the market has been more comfortable selling than buying the news. The next scheduled event falls on June 26, with the most-watched catalyst being a clinical update for ERAS-0015, the company's pan-RAS molecular glue degrader. The bull case rests on that program demonstrating differentiated depth of response versus competitors; the bear case is that Phase 1 data in early June remains early, partial, and unconfirmed. With peers RLAY up 17% on the week and SMMT adding 6%, the broader oncology trade has been constructive — but TNGX fell 3% over the same period, a reminder that clinical-stage divergence can be severe. The setup for the June 26 event is therefore less about whether Erasca has a viable RAS platform and more about whether the dose-escalation data for ERAS-0015 clears the bar the Street is using to judge it against daraxonrasib.
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