OXY enters the week riding a 6.4% gain — its best weekly move in months — but the real story is an about-face from one of the Street's more prominent skeptics.
Evercore ISI's Stephen Richardson flipped from Underperform to Outperform on Tuesday, lifting his target from $58 to $65. That's a two-notch swing from a bellwether firm, and it landed with force: OXY closed at $51.68, leaving the stock still more than 20% below the new target. The broader analyst picture has been tilting constructive for weeks. Barclays upgraded to Overweight back in late May with a $72 target. Mizuho nudged its Outperform target higher around the same time. The main holdout is Morgan Stanley, which trimmed its Equal-Weight target to $68 from $74 at the end of June — a nudge lower on valuation rather than a directional call against the name. Seven buys, zero sells in the consensus. The mean target of $65.39 implies roughly 27% upside from current levels, a gap wide enough to suggest the Street thinks the recent selloff — OXY is still down 9% over the past month — has overshot.
The lending market is offering no pushback to the bulls. Availability is extraordinarily loose at roughly 87 times the current short interest, meaning borrow is essentially unlimited. Cost to borrow has edged up to 0.47% this week but remains well below half a percent — negligibly cheap for anyone wanting to put on a short position. Short interest itself is a modest 2.84% of the free float, up about 2.3% on the week but down almost 7% over the past month. The short score of 32.9 is low and has barely moved, confirming there is no meaningful short-selling pressure building. Options positioning reinforces that read: the put/call ratio is running at 0.49, below its 20-day average of 0.52 and near the bottom of its 52-week range. That's call-heavy positioning — the options market is leaning with the rally, not hedging against it.
On valuation, OXY trades at roughly 9.9x trailing earnings and 5x EV/EBITDA, both broadly in line with the E&P peer group after the month's pullback. Price-to-book has compressed by roughly 0.29x over 30 days, reflecting the share price weakness. The factor picture is mixed. EPS surprise ranks in the 96th percentile — the company has consistently beaten estimates. The 90-day EPS momentum score is solid at 75, though the 30-day reading has dropped to 18, suggesting near-term estimate revisions have cooled. Days-to-cover and utilization ranks sit in the low-70s percentile range, consistent with a name that shorts view as relatively hard to squeeze. The dividend score is a perfect 100, though the most recent dividend data on record dates to mid-2022, so the current yield picture is incomplete.
The insider signal adds a small but pointed data point. OXY's new CEO Richard Jackson bought 4,770 shares at $52.38 on June 23 — a $250,000 purchase at a price close to where the stock trades now. Against the backdrop of several director sales at $60.27 in early May (routine RSU-type disposals at low significance) and CEO Vicki Hollub's departure-related selling in June, Jackson's open-market buy stands out as a directional signal from the person now in the chair. The 90-day net insider position is technically positive at roughly 85,000 shares, though the value is dominated by Hollub's $4.3 million of selling — making Jackson's buy the more meaningful read on current management conviction.
Earnings are scheduled for August 5. The recent track record on that date is one-directional: OXY fell 3.8%, 9.1%, and 8.5% on the three most recent post-print days, with the five-day windows also predominantly negative. Peers were broadly up 4-5% on the day this week — MTDR, APA, and COP all moved with OXY — suggesting the rally is sector-driven rather than stock-specific. Whether the Evercore upgrade and the CEO's open-market buy are enough to change that earnings-day pattern is the question the next four weeks will answer.
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