ING heads into its Q1 earnings release this morning with options markets flashing the most bearish signal of the past year.
The clearest read on sentiment is in options. The put/call ratio jumped to 1.26 on April 29 — a four standard-deviation spike above the 20-day mean of 0.40, and the highest print in 52 weeks. For most of the past month the PCR ran between 0.24 and 0.47, making this session's move a sharp departure. The message is unambiguous: traders loaded up on downside protection immediately before the results dropped.
The results, released pre-market on April 30, gave the hedgers mixed news. Q1 EPS came in at $0.63, beating the $0.60 consensus estimate. Revenue, however, missed — $6.82 billion against a $6.91 billion expectation. ING simultaneously confirmed it had completed its previous share buyback (47 million shares repurchased at an average of €23.46) and launched a fresh €1.0 billion programme to maintain its CET1 ratio at 13%. The beat on earnings paired with the revenue shortfall is the kind of split that options traders were hedging for, and the buyback announcement adds a shareholder return angle the Street will weigh against the top-line miss.
Short interest is low and does not add meaningful pressure to the setup. Estimated short interest on the NYSE-listed ADR has risen roughly 22% over the past week to approximately 1.71 million shares, but that remains a very modest absolute level for a stock of ING's size. The ORTEX short score has eased steadily from 39.3 on April 16 to 30.2 by April 28, reflecting a lending market that is firmly in relaxed territory. Borrowing costs tell the same story: after a brief spike to 12.5% on April 17 — likely tied to dividend-record mechanics on the Amsterdam-listed ordinary shares — the cost to borrow fell back sharply to just 0.43%. Availability is wide. None of this points to a squeeze dynamic; the short side is not the driver here.
On the Street, the most recent actionable analyst data is Barclays' upgrade to Overweight from Equal-Weight, reported in July 2025 — the firm has been directionally constructive on ING for several years and that stance appears intact. Older rating data from other major firms predates the current setup by several years and is not reliable for current positioning purposes. Valuation multiples provide cleaner context: the price-to-earnings ratio of 9.6x and price-to-book of 1.31x reflect the discount European banks typically carry relative to US peers, with both multiples drifting modestly higher over the past 30 days on the back of ING's strong price performance — the stock gained more than 11% in April before this week's modest 1.5% pullback to $27.65. Factor scores are supportive on earnings momentum, with the 30-day and 90-day EPS momentum percentile ranks at 75 and 74 respectively, and EPS surprise sitting at the 67th percentile.
The institutional picture is well-anchored. Capital Research holds 7.5% of shares, BlackRock 5.8%, and Vanguard 4.7%, with Amundi and Norges Bank rounding out the top five at roughly 3% each. JPMorgan trimmed its position by about 7 million shares as recently as April 17, a notable reduction that may reflect index rebalancing or pre-earnings risk management. Insider data for the NYSE-listed ADR is entirely stale — the most recent trade on file dates to 2015 — and should not be read as a current signal.
The next scheduled event is Q2 results on July 30. Between now and then, the market's focus will be on whether the revenue miss is structural or macro-driven, and whether the new €1.0 billion buyback provides a floor for the Amsterdam-listed shares as broader European bank sentiment continues to recover.
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