MUR Earnings Hangover: Bears Hold Ground After the Selloff

Murphy Oil just delivered its Q2 earnings and the market's verdict was swift — the stock is down 16% on the week to $33.37, the actual print worse than the pre-release anxiety already priced in.

The earnings move itself tells the sharpest part of the story. MUR fell roughly 7.4% on August 6, the day results hit, and had already lost nearly 14% in a single session the prior day as the announcement landed. That is a brutal two-day sequence. The previous note flagged the divergence between rising short interest and still-bullish options positioning ahead of the print. The earnings resolved that tension firmly in the bears' favour. Peers fared better: COP slipped just 2.4% on the week, OVV dropped 5.0%, and DVN lost 4.8%. MUR's 16% decline is roughly three times the sector's average damage, reinforcing that this was a company-specific disappointment rather than a broad commodity drawdown.

Short positioning is elevated but not spiralling higher. Bears hold 7.2% of the free float — essentially unchanged from where they were heading into earnings — having risen about 2% over the past week on a net basis. The daily reading actually dipped modestly on August 6, suggesting shorts did not pile on aggressively into the post-earnings flush. Borrowing conditions give them little reason to rush: cost to borrow has actually eased sharply over the week, falling around 16% to 0.39%, a multi-month low. Availability is exceptionally loose at roughly 880% — nearly nine shares available in the lending pool for every one already borrowed — so there is no squeeze dynamic anywhere near this stock. The ORTEX short score sits at a neutral 51, consistent with that read. This is a stock under genuine fundamental pressure, not a mechanical short-squeeze candidate.

The Street's reaction is beginning to crystallise, and the direction is one-way. UBS lowered its target to $38 from $41 just yesterday, maintaining Neutral — its second cut in three weeks after trimming from $44 to $41 on July 21. Morgan Stanley, sitting at Underweight, had already moved its target down to $35 in late June. The consensus mean target is around $42.86, implying roughly 28% upside from the current price — but that figure is being dragged down steadily and will likely fall further as analysts digest the Q2 results. The bear case the data had flagged — high Gulf operating costs, below-target production volumes, and commodity price headwinds — has now been partially confirmed by the print itself. On valuation, EV/EBITDA compressed to around 3.4x, down from the mid-3.5x range a month ago, and price-to-book has fallen below 0.86x. The forward EPS momentum rank has slipped to the 13th percentile on a 90-day basis, pointing to consistent downward revisions.

Options positioning shifted noticeably after the print. The put/call ratio climbed to 0.237 on Friday — still below its 20-day average of 0.252 and well inside the 52-week high of 1.64, but notably higher than the sub-0.23 readings seen earlier in the week. The recovery in the PCR suggests some participants are now adding hedges or taking a more cautious stance, though the ratio remains call-heavy relative to its longer history. That is a mild pivot, not a capitulation.

The next earnings event is not until November 5. Between now and then, the focus narrows to whether cost guidance holds, whether Gulf operations stabilise, and how oil prices behave — factors that will determine if analysts stop cutting or accelerate the target-price descent.