RDNT has clawed back 3.4% on the week to $56.18, reversing part of its month-long slide — but short sellers have used the bounce to rebuild positions rather than retreat.
Short interest is moving in the wrong direction for bulls. SI % FF climbed to 12.2% of free float on June 9, up nearly 5% on the week and roughly 3.4% over the past month. That keeps RadNet deeply shorted relative to peers — the ORTEX factor rank puts it in the 7th percentile for short score, meaning it is more heavily shorted than 93% of comparable names. The short score itself has edged up to 68.7 from 66.1 at the start of June, a steady grind higher even as the stock price recovered. Importantly, the borrow market is not sending a distress signal. Cost to borrow is just 0.42%, and availability is a spacious 401% of outstanding short interest — lenders are not scrambling, and new shorts face little friction. The setup is elevated short conviction with no squeeze pressure: bears are adding, and they can do so cheaply.
Options traders are not reading the same playbook. The put/call ratio is running at 0.37, essentially in line with its 20-day average of 0.36 and close to a z-score of zero. That is strikingly calm for a stock carrying 12%-plus short interest. The May history is worth noting: prior to mid-May, the PCR consistently sat below 0.10 — a period of unusually concentrated call activity — before stepping up to the 0.42–0.46 range where it has traded most of the past month. The June 9 reading is actually lower than the recent cluster, suggesting options buyers are modestly more constructive on the day the stock bounced.
The Street is still broadly bullish but progressively less so on valuation. The consensus mean price target of $89.75 implies more than 60% upside from current levels — on paper a wide gap — though analyst activity has trended downward. Barclays (the most active follower) maintained its Overweight rating in late May while cutting its target to $65 from $70, following an earlier cut from $86 in April. The bull case rests on technology leverage through TechLive (reduced MRI room closures), AI-segment scale, and joint venture volume growth. Bears point to reimbursement risk, an AI division that has yet to demonstrate clear profitability, and a stretched valuation: the trailing P/E is near 80x and EV/EBITDA is running around 15x. RadNet ranks in just the 6th percentile on EV/EBIT across the universe — deep value this is not. The EPS surprise factor score of 92, however, shows the company has a strong history of beating estimates, which partially explains why the consensus has stayed constructive despite multiple target cuts. Note: the $89.75 consensus target reflects data current as of late May; the most recent individual analyst actions suggest ongoing downward drift.
Institutional positioning adds a layer of texture. BlackRock reported adding 718,000 shares through May 31, lifting its stake to 10.0 million shares — about 12.8% of the company. T. Rowe Price added 1.5 million shares through March, a more aggressive build. On the other side, the most recent insider activity was the Chief Scientific Officer selling roughly $1.9 million of stock across a cluster of transactions in mid-March at prices between $61.72 and $63.59 — well above current levels. Net insider activity over the 90-day period ending March 19 shows net selling of around $2.2 million in value, a directional signal that has aged but is worth keeping in context as the stock trades $5–7 below those disposal prices.
With next earnings not until August 7, the immediate catalyst runway is quiet. The last two earnings prints produced a roughly 4% one-day decline followed by a 6–7% five-day fall — a consistent pattern of post-results pressure. Shorts rebuilding into a calm borrow market ahead of a stock that has historically drifted lower after results is the tension worth watching into that August date.
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