CART enters the week after its strongest quarterly result in years — and management is cashing out.
The most striking development is a cluster of C-suite sales hitting the tape within days of the August 6 earnings beat. CEO Chris Rogers sold more than 43,000 shares on August 14, netting roughly $2.1 million. CFO Emily Reuter sold 25,000 shares on August 13 and another 19,000 shares the following day — combined proceeds of nearly $2.2 million. The CLO and Chief Accounting Officer also sold in the same window. These are all low significance scores individually, but the coordination is hard to ignore: the entire senior leadership team moved to trim on the same two-day window, exactly when the stock had just re-rated higher after a 10.6% earnings pop.
Short positioning tells a calmer story and is moving in the bears' favour. Short interest has fallen sharply — down nearly 9% on the week and 14% over the past month — to around 5.8% of free float, the lowest level in the 30-day history shown here. The borrow market reflects that retreat: cost to borrow is negligible at 0.45%, and availability is extraordinarily loose at roughly 996%, meaning there are nearly ten shares available to borrow for every one currently shorted. The short score has also drifted lower, from a recent peak above 53 to just under 50 this week. None of this looks like a setup where bears are pressing the stock — it looks like an orderly unwind of a short position that no longer has a clear catalyst.
Options positioning is equally relaxed. The put/call ratio is running at 0.48, barely above its 20-day average of 0.47 and roughly in the middle of the past year's range. There is no elevated demand for downside protection here — options traders appear comfortable, not hedging.
The Street's reaction to the earnings print was uniformly positive in direction, if not unanimous on price. JP Morgan's Doug Anmuth raised his target from $55 to $62 while keeping Overweight. Barclays moved to $77 from $69. Citigroup followed on August 10, lifting to $58 from $50. Almost every firm in coverage raised its target after the result — the lone outlier being Guggenheim, which nudged its Neutral target to $46, still below the current $48.93 price. The consensus mean target sits at $57.56, implying roughly 18% upside from here. Forward earnings momentum is the standout factor: the 12-month forward EPS growth rank scores in the 98th percentile of the ORTEX universe, and 30-day EPS momentum ranks in the 82nd. Value remains the weak point — EV/EBITDA near 7.7x and a P/E around 10.6x on trailing figures look undemanding, but the Street is pricing in execution on the advertising ramp rather than current multiples. The bear case centres on margin compression from lower-yielding off-site advertising and the fading of exclusivity agreements with major grocery partners.
The 90-day insider net is positive on paper — $15 million net sold, but the share count moves slightly positive because the data aggregates across purchase and sale activity over the full period. The more relevant signal is what happened this week: the leadership team exercised and sold into a 10% post-earnings move with near-uniform timing. That behaviour is worth watching ahead of the next earnings print, now scheduled for November 9, particularly if the stock makes further progress toward the upper end of analyst targets.
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