Hagerty, Inc. heads into the week with a rare tailwind: a same-day analyst upgrade and a stock that has gained 16% in a month, now trading at $12.15 and closing in on the consensus price target.
The most notable development landed Tuesday morning. Keefe, Bruyette & Woods raised its price target on HGTY to $15 from $14, maintaining its Outperform rating — making KBW the lone bull with a clear buy signal among the covering analysts. That $15 target implies roughly 23% upside from current levels. The broader Street remains cautious: the consensus is a Hold, with the mean target at $12.86, barely above the current price. Earlier in the year Truist trimmed to $11 and Wells Fargo did the same, both keeping neutral ratings, suggesting the holdouts are waiting for proof that the one-month rally has legs. The EPS picture complicates the bull case: HGTY ranks in the bottom 1st percentile for both EPS surprise and 90-day EPS momentum, meaning the company has been consistently missing or disappointing on the earnings front. Against that, the 30-day EPS momentum score just flipped to a perfect 100, which may explain why KBW chose this week to move the target. Next earnings are due August 4.
Positioning in the lending market is about as relaxed as it gets for a name of this size. Availability is running near 906% — meaning there are roughly nine shares available to borrow for every one currently lent out. That is well above the 52-week low of 224%, and borrow costs have drifted down to around 0.47%, roughly 18% cheaper than a month ago. Short interest itself is a footnote: just 1.2% of the free float, and slipping further this week. There is no short-side pressure story here.
Options traders have swung hard to the bullish side, though the signal deserves some context. The put/call ratio is running at 0.15, near a 52-week low of 0.12 and well below its 20-day average of 0.39. That reflects a sharp structural shift — through most of May and into mid-June, the PCR held above 0.84, indicating heavy put positioning. The flip to near-zero puts suggests either a rapid unwind of downside hedges or a surge in call activity as the stock climbed. At nearly one standard deviation below the recent mean, the options market is now as one-directionally positioned to the upside as it has been all year.
The institutional structure of HGTY is worth noting because it is genuinely unusual. State Farm holds roughly 51% of shares, an anchor position that has not moved since the last reported period. Neuberger Berman is the most recently active institutional name, adding 452,000 shares as of mid-June, bringing its stake to 8.6% of shares. T. Rowe Price added 484,000 shares in Q1, and Polar Capital added 233,000. On the insider side, the Chief Accounting Officer sold roughly $183,000 worth of stock across several transactions in late June and early July — small in dollar terms and likely plan-driven, but worth flagging given the timing against the recent price run. The net 90-day insider position, however, is slightly positive at around $413,000, anchored by a May purchase of 9,500 shares by an independent director at $10.46.
The August 4 earnings date is now the focal point: the question is whether the sharp 30-day EPS momentum reversal represents a genuine revision trend or a single data point, and whether the stock — up 16% in a month and pressing toward the mean target — can hold its gains into the print.
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