APO heads into the final stretch before its July 31 earnings with an unusual split: the options market has just posted its most call-heavy reading of the past year, even as short interest quietly continues its six-week unwind.
The options signal is the sharpest development since the last note. The put/call ratio dropped to 0.844 this week — the lowest print in the past 52 weeks, which range from 0.55 to 1.00. That's now more than 3.5 standard deviations below the 20-day mean of 0.876. The previous note flagged that the extreme pre-earnings call skew had "unwound almost entirely" after the June 8 print; what has happened since is that call positioning has extended again, pushing the z-score to a fresh extreme. This is no longer a residual from the earnings setup — it's a new, independent lean toward the upside in the options market.
The short side tells a calmer story. Short interest has dropped to 5.15% of the free float, down another 2.8% on the week and nearly 7% over the past month — the steady unwind noted after the June 8 earnings print has continued. The borrow market is relaxed: cost to borrow is running at just 0.51%, and availability has loosened materially to 307%, up from around 240% a week ago and the highest reading in the 52-week window (the tightest the market has been was 202%). There is no friction in the lending pool for anyone wanting to build or maintain a short position, but fewer are choosing to.
The Street remains broadly constructive, though the most recent target moves have been selective. Piper Sandler lifted its target to $157 in late May, maintaining an Overweight rating. UBS raised to $158 earlier that month, also keeping Buy. TD Cowen trimmed to $146 while holding its Buy. The consensus price target of $150.38 sits about 8.6% above the current price of $138.48. Morgan Stanley, the most notable dissent in the recent analyst flow, cut its target from $181 to $165 in April but kept Overweight. Goldman Sachs made the sharpest move — slashing from $169 to $134 — but has since been overtaken by the stock's recovery. The bull case rests on record Retirement Services inflows and a favorable credit deployment environment. Bears point to a meaningful downgrade in SRE growth expectations and competitive pressure in the retail channel.
Ownership is worth a brief note. Capital Research added nearly 10 million shares in its most recent filing, bringing its stake to 9.6% — the largest disclosed institutional holder by a meaningful margin. BlackRock and State Street also added modestly. On the insider side, subsidiary president John Zito sold roughly $6.4 million worth of shares across three transactions in late May, and CFO Martin Kelly sold $943,000 in mid-May. The sales carry low trade-significance scores and follow a pattern of routine scheduled disposals, but the absence of any buying from management over the past 90 days is worth noting alongside the aggressive call positioning from external market participants.
The next focal point is the July 31 earnings release, and recent history gives a mixed read on what to expect: the June 8 print produced a 3.6% gain on the day and extended to 6.3% across the week, while the prior report delivered a 1.9% decline on results day before recovering to near flat. With the options market now tilted further toward calls than at any point in the past year, the setup into that print — and how the skew evolves over the next six weeks — is the clearest thing to watch.
See the live data behind this article on ORTEX.
Open APO on ORTEX →ORTEX Market Intelligence content is generated by AI from a snapshot of ORTEX's proprietary data. Content is informational only and does not constitute investment advice.
