The OMER short squeeze
OMER, despite its promising pipeline still ‘enjoyed’ large short interest for years. The shorts long held this stock in captivity, though recent developments (not COVID related) were making their position a bit more precarious, including the rolling BLA submission for NARSO which is all but complete. Their pass through status with OMIDRIA was/is always in question, and without that cash cow flowing, OMER was looking at both substantial revenue loss, but likely a dilutive raise to fund OMS-721 and its pipeline. OMIDRIA ‘s importance to OMER in this persons opinion was less the revenue long term, but more the cash short term to fund OMS-721 and the rest of the pipeline. There is a lot of doubt, especially by shorts, that positive news for OMIDRIA was fifth coming, and it may still not. Hence the happy shorts.
And I was always of the opinion that shorts are smarter than the average bears ( pun!). That even if positive OMIDRIA news showed up, they would find ways to unwind their positions and escape relative unscathed. On the OMER board a few days back, I opined about these long term risks now all becoming very near term risks , and others (Alan) wondering what’s is up Greg, the CEOs sleeve, letting all this come to a head. In effect being forced to partner away assets , or be forced into a capital raise after bad OMIDRIA news Now we know what was going on
Short squeezes, when they happen, more often occur when completely unexpected news pops out of no where, not when news good or bad has a date attached to it. Like I said shorts know how to navigate those events. Nope, this may be a real short squeeze about to happen. Shorts waking up this morning with no pants to pull up.
Recall Berks tutorial on short positions in stocks. OMER was the poster boy for that. However, I think even BERK would agree that wholly unexpected great news announced in these long term over shorted stocks can simply break the backs of the shorts.