SEALSQ Corp enters the final days of May in a genuinely unusual position: the stock has surged 31% in a week, yet short sellers have barely moved — and options traders have turned more bullish than at any point in the past year.
The clearest tension is in options. The put/call ratio has collapsed to 0.0197 — the lowest reading of the past 52 weeks — running nearly 1.6 standard deviations below its 20-day average of 0.047. That is an almost exclusively call-driven options market, signalling that traders are reaching for upside rather than hedging against a reversal. The backdrop matters: a recent note flagged that SEALSQ secured a major enterprise contract with a tier-one telecoms provider, validating the company's post-quantum cryptography positioning. The options market appears to be pricing in the possibility that this is the start of something larger.
Short interest tells a more stubborn story. Bears have barely retreated despite the price action. SI sits at roughly 10% of free float — down just 1% on the week and still more than 27% below April's peak, which itself was above 14% of float. The structural step-down in shorts occurred in early May, when short interest fell sharply from the 13-14% range; since then, the remaining base has been sticky, hovering in a 9.9–10.3% band through the last two weeks. Borrow costs have eased from their April highs above 20% but remain elevated at 12.3%, and availability is tight at roughly 21% — meaning for every five shares already borrowed, only about one more is currently lendable. That combination — sticky shorts, elevated borrow cost, constrained availability — keeps the mechanics of a squeeze very much alive in this ticker.
The ORTEX short score of 69.3 reflects this tension directly. It has held in a narrow 69–70 range for the past two weeks, pointing to a well-entrenched short base that has not panicked into a 31% weekly gain. Peer context underscores the move's scale: close correlate RGTI also surged, gaining 51% on the week, while GFS added 33%. The semiconductor and quantum-adjacent names broadly caught a bid, which gives the LAES move a macro tailwind — but the magnitude still stands out even within the group.
The Street angle is limited by stale analyst data. Cantor Fitzgerald's Troy Jensen lowered his price target to $4 from $7 in early April while maintaining an Overweight rating — a cut that now looks prescient given the stock was trading well below that level until this week's rally carried it back to $3.56. The mean analyst target remains at $6, implying meaningful upside at current levels, though that figure is now nearly two months old and should be treated cautiously. Fundamentals remain weak: the ORTEX quality score sits at just 17.5, with a deeply negative return on assets and a near-zero return on capital employed. Valuation is effectively anchored to the narrative rather than the income statement.
Insider activity adds a note of caution. CFO John O'Hara sold shares on ten separate occasions between April 9 and April 24, offloading roughly 95,250 shares in total at prices ranging from $2.08 to $3.06. Two vice presidents also sold smaller blocks in May. Aggregate net insider activity over 90 days is modestly positive at 240,250 shares, but the CFO's consistent selling into any price strength is a pattern worth tracking — especially now that the stock has moved above the levels at which those sales occurred.
With earnings scheduled for June 10, the setup heading into that date is the next focal point: whether the short base finally breaks, whether the contract news translates into any revenue guidance, and whether options sentiment holds its strongly bullish lean or fades as the event approaches.
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