Retail investors are circling O at its lowest price in a year. Wikipedia views and ORTEX stock page traffic have hit 3.25 standard deviations above the 90-day average, a level that typically marks peak curiosity rather than conviction. The stock is down 11% in a month and analysts keep cutting targets.
Five firms have trimmed price targets since September began. The most consequential move came on 24 September, when Scotiabank's Nicholas Yulico downgraded to Sector Perform from Sector Outperform and cut his target to $59 from $67. Mizuho's Haendel St. Juste went to $61 from $66. Evercore ISI cut to $65. Wells Fargo cut to $64. Barclays cut to $65.
The consensus sits at Hold, with a mean target of $67.26. That implies roughly 22% upside from the current $55.14 price. The gap between where analysts think the stock should trade and where it does is unusually wide, and it is widening with each cut.
The bear case is straightforward: rising financing costs compress AFFO, accretive acquisitions get harder to find, and any slip in occupancy threatens the dividend that draws most of the shareholder base.
The put-call ratio spiked to 0.69 on 28 September, a 52-week high. By 29 September it had pulled back sharply to 0.47, below the 20-day mean of 0.52. That single-day spike followed immediately after the Scotiabank downgrade, suggesting a burst of put buying that did not persist.
The PCR z-score sits at minus 1.0, meaning the current reading is if anything below the recent norm for puts. Options traders are not aggressively pressing the short side today despite the price decline.
Short interest has dropped 14% in one week to 3.8% of free float. Over the past month the position has shrunk by nearly 24%. At 3.8% of float, SI is not a primary story here, but the direction of travel is notable: shorts are retreating even as the stock falls. Borrow availability has risen to 827%, well above the 52-week low of 556%, meaning there is ample room in the lending pool for anyone who wants to add a position. Cost to borrow sits at 0.41%, a low figure by any measure.
Shorts leaving a falling stock is either capitulation after a profitable run, or a signal that the easy downside has been extracted.
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