Nuvalent reports after Tuesday's close with options traders making the most bullish call in a year — a stark divergence from analysts who just told the market the stock has nowhere left to go.
The options signal is the sharpest read on the current setup. The put/call ratio collapsed to 0.16, more than two standard deviations below its 20-day average of 0.70 — the lowest call-skew reading in at least a year, with the 52-week floor at 0.15. That's not modest optimism; it's an aggressive lean toward upside. The shift is dramatic in context: just a week ago the PCR sat above 0.85, reflecting a far more balanced posture. Something changed sharply after the 35% weekly surge in the stock price, and it wasn't the bears getting louder.
The analyst picture pulls in the opposite direction. Ten firms downgraded NUVL on June 9–10, immediately following the stock's single-day 39% jump that landed shares at $123.25. UBS cut from Buy to Neutral, Barclays dropped from Overweight to Equal-Weight with a target reduction from $152 to $124, and Guggenheim cut from Buy to Neutral after holding a $151 target. Nearly every new price target clustered at exactly $124 — pennies above the current close. That consensus precision is a message: the Street believes the FDA acceptance of neladalkib's NDA, the catalyst behind the surge, is now fully in the price. Only one buy rating remains among seventeen analysts. The bear case centres on negative near-term financials, a high-risk pipeline stage, and competition risk in ALK+ NSCLC. Bulls point to zidesamtinib's data and the regulatory progress on neladalkib as value not yet fully captured.
The lending market does nothing to clarify the tension. Availability is loose — 1,260% relative to shares already borrowed, well above even the 52-week trough of 542%. Borrowing costs have eased to 0.47%, down from a recent intra-week high near 0.94%. Short interest at 7.6% of free float is real but has actually declined slightly over the past two sessions, and the ORTEX short score has dropped from 58 earlier in the month to 49.5 — moving out of the elevated range. None of that points to a crowded short; it points to a market where sellers borrowed into the rally and are now stepping back. Insider activity cuts the other way: the CEO sold over $2.6 million in shares on June 8, and a C-suite officer sold another $2.5 million on June 9 — both into the post-surge price.
Monday's print is therefore a test of whether the neladalkib NDA acceptance represents a floor for the bull case, or whether a pre-revenue biotech trading just below a wall of $124 price targets can produce anything in the quarterly numbers to reopen the debate the Street has effectively closed.
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