Ocular Therapeutix heads into a pivotal stretch with options traders at their most bullish in months — and a formal readout event just days away.
The sharpest signal this week is in options. The put/call ratio has collapsed to 0.24, more than two standard deviations below its 20-day average of 0.28 — the most call-heavy positioning the market has shown all year. The 52-week low PCR is 0.11, so there is room for it to get more extreme, but the current reading is notably aggressive given the calendar. With an earnings event scheduled for June 17, the options market is leaning heavily toward upside rather than hedging against disappointment.
The stock itself has recovered 8.4% on the week to $8.94, bouncing off a soft month that left it down roughly 2.4% from a month ago. Correlated peers have been moving in the same direction — TRVI rose 6.6% on the week and ARVN added 2.2% — but RFL was the standout, surging more than 44% over the same period, suggesting the broader small-cap biotech tape has been supportive rather than idiosyncratic to OCUL.
Short positioning is elevated but the borrow market tells a loose story. Short interest runs at 12.4% of the free float — genuinely high for a mid-stage biotech — and has crept up about 9% over the past month from roughly 23.5 million shares to 26.5 million. Yet the borrow market is not tightening around those positions: cost to borrow has eased to 0.45%, down more than 10% on the week and near its softest level of the past six weeks. Availability is ample at 319%, well above the 52-week floor of 182%, meaning new shorts face no friction entering here. The ORTEX short score of 68.4 is elevated and has been firm across the past two weeks — this is not a crowded-trade unwind, it is a sustained short thesis — but the mechanics of the borrow market are not pointing toward a squeeze.
Analyst consensus remains unanimously bullish across seven buy ratings, with targets ranging from $18 (Needham) to $30 (RBC Capital). RBC reiterated its Outperform at $30 following the last earnings report in early May, while Needham held its Buy at $18 just after the same event. The spread in targets reflects genuine disagreement about near-term commercial execution for Axpaxli rather than direction of travel. Bulls point to SOL-1 Phase 3 data in wet AMD and the potential single-trial FDA filing pathway into a $15 billion market. Bears flag the capital burn, repeat-dosing commercial risk, and a competitive field that includes entrenched anti-VEGF incumbents. With the stock at $8.94 and the mean target at $26, the gap is wide — but institutional ownership shows sophisticated money is positioned: Deep Track Capital nearly doubled its holding in the first quarter to 8.99% of shares, and Point72 added 4.5 million shares in the same period.
Insider activity is worth a brief note. On May 26, five executives including CEO Pravin Dugel sold shares — modest in dollar terms, with Dugel's sale totalling roughly $173,000 — at prices near $8.20. These are small, likely plan-driven sales near current market levels. The more meaningful data point is the 90-day net insider position, which is actually net positive at roughly 44,000 shares, reflecting a $461,000 open-market purchase by independent director Richard Lindstrom in February at $7.66. That purchase, made at a meaningful discount to current analyst targets, is the more informative signal in the insider picture.
The June 17 event is the immediate focus: it is less about quarterly financials and more about what management says regarding the Axpaxli NDA timeline, the SOL-R readout, and the capital runway needed to get there.
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