MGM Resorts International heads into its July 29 earnings report with the analyst community meaningfully more constructive than it was two months ago — but the stock is still trading below where that optimism suggests it should be.
The Street's tone has shifted notably since late May. JP Morgan upgraded MGM to Overweight and later lifted its target to $53. Wells Fargo moved off an Underweight rating entirely, pushing its target to $48. Macquarie raised its Outperform target to $52. Barclays held its Equal-Weight stance but still bumped its number from $39 to $48. The consensus mean now sits at roughly $49.80 against a stock price of $45.54 — implying about 9% upside even after a run of upgrades. Two firms did move to the sidelines in this period — Stifel downgraded to Hold in mid-June and CBRE also stepped back to Hold — so the bullishness is not unanimous.
The bull and bear cases remain sharply divided on Las Vegas operations. Bulls point to EBITDAR growth running well above 30% year-over-year, strong group bookings for 2026, and a digital segment growing 35% on organic momentum. Bears counter that the Strip has been uneven: luxury properties held up but non-luxury weekday volumes fell materially, dragging margins and pushing management to trim EBITDAR guidance. The question going into the print is whether June and July data show that weakness stabilising or deepening.
Short interest at 6.6% of the free float is real but has been deflating fast — down roughly 30% over the past month from levels above 25 million shares in mid-June. The borrow market tells the same story: availability is extremely loose at 1,416%, meaning there are far more shares available to lend than there are shorts in the market, and the cost to borrow has eased to under 0.30%. Options positioning adds a contrarian tilt. The put/call ratio has dropped to 0.57, near its 52-week low and roughly 1.5 standard deviations below its 20-day average — meaning call buyers have recently dominated. That's an unusually bullish options lean heading into an event where recent earnings have produced muted or negative reactions: the last two prints saw the stock fall around 2% on the day and extend losses to roughly 4% over the following five sessions.
The July 29 print is therefore less a test of MGM's long-term recovery story and more a test of whether the Strip softness that pressured Q1 results has found a floor — and whether management can give investors enough confidence in the back half to justify the 20%-plus target upgrades analysts have issued since May.
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