CON heads into the second half of 2026 with a striking divergence at its core: the stock has surged nearly 20% over the past month while the Chairman has been selling into every uptick.
The analyst story is the clearest driver of sentiment right now. Coverage has been building steadily, and the direction is uniformly constructive. Goldman Sachs initiated at Buy with a $30 target in early June. William Blair added an Outperform just this week. Truist lifted its target to $31 in May. RBC, Wells Fargo, and JPMorgan all carry positive ratings, and the consensus recommendation ranks in the 99th percentile versus the broader universe — as close to a clean sweep of Street support as a healthcare name gets. At $29.75, CON trades within touching distance of the cluster of $30–$31 targets, which compresses the implied upside but underscores how quickly the stock has closed the gap. The P/E multiple has expanded roughly 14% over the past 30 days to just under 18x, and EV/EBITDA has drifted higher too, so valuation is no longer the compelling entry point it was in May.
The options market has flipped sharply in the same direction. Calls now dominate positioning heavily — the put/call ratio has collapsed to 0.11, well below its 20-day average of 1.71 and about 1.3 standard deviations beneath recent norms. That's a dramatic rotation: as recently as early June, the PCR was running above 3.0, reflecting deep defensive hedging. The shift to calls suggests a new group of participants is expressing directional views rather than buying protection — a meaningful change in the character of options flow over just a few weeks.
Short interest and the borrow market tell a quiet story by comparison. Bears hold just 2.3% of the free float short, a low absolute level, though it has risen about 15% over the past month even as the stock climbed — a modest rebuild rather than a capitulation. Borrow costs remain negligible at 0.54%, and availability is extraordinarily loose at roughly 2,800% of short interest, meaning there are nearly 28 shares available to lend for every one currently borrowed. There is no squeeze dynamic here, and no meaningful friction for new short-sellers who want to add. The short score of 35 sits in the middle of the universe — unremarkable in either direction.
The insider register is the one counter-signal worth noting. Chairman Robert Ortenzio sold 130,000 shares at $25.00 in early May, then sold another 130,000 at $25.00 again on June 1 — $6.5 million in total over 90 days, both transactions executed as the stock hovered near what is now well below the current price. The stock has since run nearly $5 higher. Those sales were not poorly timed relative to any fundamental development; they simply happened before the rally accelerated, though the pattern of consistent trimming at the same price level is worth tracking as CON presses against its target range.
Q2 earnings are scheduled for August 6. The two comparable prints in the data both produced meaningful positive reactions — roughly 6% the next day and close to 10–15% over the following week. With the stock now trading at analyst consensus targets and options positioning skewed bullishly, the August print becomes the next test of whether the post-spin operating narrative is sustaining momentum or whether the Street's optimism has run ahead of the fundamentals.
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