D-Wave Quantum has cleared the June 1 earnings hurdle with barely a scratch, and analysts responded the following morning by raising price targets — yet insiders who sold into the rally look increasingly prescient, and the short base remains stubbornly intact.
The earnings reaction itself was the mildest in recent memory for a stock that has been violently unpredictable. The June 1 print produced a one-day move of just -0.76%, a sharp contrast to May 12's earnings sell-off that sent the stock down nearly 11% on the day and 24% over the following five sessions. That the stock essentially went nowhere after the June 1 report is notable on its own. QBTS closed Tuesday at $29.91, up 7.5% on the week and 46% over the past month, extending the sustained recovery from the May trough. Closest peer ARQQ slipped 1.9% on the week while BTQ gained 13.7%, confirming that the quantum-adjacent complex remains risk-on in aggregate — QBTS is moving broadly with the group rather than on isolated company news.
Analyst activity following the June 1 report has been uniformly constructive. B. Riley and Roth Capital both raised targets to $40 on June 2 — Roth from $30, a $10 lift — while Rosenblatt held its existing $43 target and Needham reiterated its Buy at $40. Every firm covering the name carries a Buy or Outperform. The mean price target now sits at roughly $36.40, a ~22% premium to current price. That gap is a genuine signal of Street confidence, though it's worth noting that after May's earnings shock, Canaccord and Mizuho both trimmed targets while holding their Buy ratings — a reminder that the consensus direction is bullish but not unconditional. The bull case rests on D-Wave's dual-platform positioning as the only publicly traded quantum company offering both annealing and gate-model systems, and a pipeline of commercial QCaaS bookings. Bears point to the uncertain timeline for widespread adoption and a path to $1.5 billion in revenue that stretches to 2035.
The short base has eased since the frenzy captured in prior notes but has not broken. SI % of Free Float dipped to 15.0% — roughly 52 million shares — down from 15.9% flagged in the May 27 note and the peak of 61.7 million shares in late April. That's continued gradual covering, not capitulation. Borrow availability has actually loosened this week, rising to 35% from a tighter 22–27% range that persisted through most of May. The cost to borrow has dropped sharply, falling 22% over the week to just 0.80% annualised — effectively free to borrow. Together these signals point to a borrow market that is less stressed than it was two weeks ago, even as 15% of the float remains short. The ORTEX short score of 66.6 remains elevated and has been edging down only slowly over the past ten days, consistent with a position being unwound in size rather than abandoned. Options positioning shows the put/call ratio at 0.73, slightly above its 20-day average of 0.71 and about 1.2 standard deviations above the mean — mild caution, not a defensive extreme.
The insider selling flagged in the May 29 preview note remains the most uncomfortable data point in the picture. CFO John Markovich sold 328,752 shares on May 22 for approximately $9.1 million. CEO Alan Baratz, the Chief Legal Officer, and an EVP all sold in the same fortnight. Net insider disposals over the past 90 days exceed $12.8 million. These trades occurred at prices of $14–$28, well below Tuesday's close of $29.91 — meaning those sellers left money on the table relative to the post-earnings stability, yet the cluster of C-suite participation across multiple executives remains a structural caution. BlackRock added 1.96 million shares through April and remains the largest institutional holder at 8.2% of shares outstanding, providing some counterweight to the insider trend.
The next scheduled earnings event is August 6. Between now and then, the question is whether the short base — now nearly three months into a gradual unwind — continues to ease at this pace or finds a floor as some shorts remain convicted on valuation. The price-to-book multiple has expanded to 11.7x, up more than 3.5 points over the past 30 days, and the EV/EBITDA remains deeply negative at -78x, underlining that this is a story priced on future optionality rather than current fundamentals. How analysts revise their targets in the weeks ahead — particularly whether Mizuho, whose $29 target sits right at the current price, moves — will be a clean read on whether the post-earnings relief has changed the fundamental thesis or merely the near-term sentiment.
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