Popular, Inc. heads into its July 23 earnings report with the Street firmly in its corner and targets racing higher — the question is whether the results can keep pace.
The analyst bid has been unusually broad and consistent. In just the past two weeks, Benchmark initiated coverage with a Buy and a $201 target, while Truist raised its target from $172 to $192. That follows Barclays and Wells Fargo both lifting targets in early July — Barclays to $185, Wells Fargo to $180. The consensus mean sits around $184.56, above the current price of $169. Every recent move has been a raise or a fresh buy-side initiation. No firm has cut. The bull case centres on a 9% upward revision to 2025 net interest income estimates, accelerating loan growth, and EPS forecasts pointing to 9% growth this year and 11% next. The bear case is narrower: Popular is largely a Puerto Rico story, and any deterioration in the island's economic outlook — which analysts consistently flag as a dependency — would flow directly into credit estimates.
Positioning in the lending market is about as relaxed as it gets. Short interest is 3.1% of free float, which is not negligible, but availability is extraordinarily loose — roughly 80 shares available to borrow for every one currently shorted. Borrowing costs have more than halved this week, dropping from around 0.50% to just 0.24%, the lowest level in the 30-day window. Short interest itself edged down nearly 5% on the week, after a sharp build through late June that briefly pushed shares short about 25% above their early-month level. That mid-month build has now partially unwound. Options confirm the relaxed tone: the put/call ratio is 0.19, slightly above its 20-day average but well within one standard deviation, and still close to the lower end of its 52-week range. There is no meaningful hedge pressure building ahead of the print.
Factor scores support the constructive read without quite screaming conviction. The EPS surprise rank is in the 88th percentile — Popular has a strong habit of beating estimates. The 90-day EPS momentum rank sits at 87, reflecting how aggressively the forward numbers have been revised higher. Dividend score comes in at 85, though the most recent dividend history in the data predates 2023 and that figure should be treated with caution. The short score of 36 places Popular in the lower third of the universe on short-side pressure, consistent with the loose borrow environment. On valuation, the stock trades at roughly 10.6x trailing earnings and 1.5x book — the PE multiple has expanded about 0.9 turns over the past month as the price has climbed 5%. That is not cheap for a regional bank, but the Street is clearly paying for the earnings upgrade cycle.
The one contrarian signal worth noting is insider activity. Net insider selling over the past 90 days totals roughly $5 million across several executives. No single transaction is alarming — the largest was an independent director selling $3.45 million in late April — but the direction is uniformly outward. Against a backdrop of rising analyst targets and a stock at multi-year highs, the insider selling is at least worth registering. Peers have generally moved in line: closest correlate FBP gained 1.5% on the week, HWC added 1.1%, while VLY fell about 2% — suggesting BPOP's modest 0.6% weekly gain reflects a broadly stable regional bank tape rather than any BPOP-specific drift.
The April earnings print saw the stock fall less than 1% on the day before recovering to post a 1.4% gain over the following week — a pattern suggesting results-day moves are muted even when the underlying numbers are good. With targets clustered between $180 and $201 and the July 23 Q2 report approaching, the dynamic to watch is whether NII and loan growth figures land close enough to the revised estimates to sustain the upgrade cycle — or whether the bar has simply been raised too fast.
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