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RTX Corporation is now down nearly 9% over the past month and trading at $183.29, with thirteen days left before its October 20 earnings, and the gap between the stock price and what analysts think it is worth has grown wider still.
The slide has continued since last week's note, when RTX closed at $186.94. This week's further 2% decline pushes the stock to its lowest level of the recent run. The mean analyst target is $233.41, implying roughly 27% upside from current levels. That number has not moved materially; the discount is widening because the stock keeps falling, not because the Street has turned. The most recent action was Bernstein lowering its target to $223 in late September, from $232, while holding Market Perform. That is the clearest sign of a firm that respects the selloff but is not ready to change its view. The broader analyst community remains constructive: TD Cowen holds a Buy with a $240 target, RBC an Outperform with $250, and Susquehanna a Positive with $245, all set after the strong Q2 print in late July. The analyst recommendation differential ranks in the 93rd percentile of the ORTEX universe, which is an unusually high degree of relative bullishness for a stock that has lost nearly 9% in a month.
Valuation has compressed accordingly. The price-to-earnings multiple has dropped 2.4 points over thirty days to 23.8x, and the price-to-book ratio has fallen 0.36 over the same window to 3.49x. EV/EBITDA has eased to 16.3x, down modestly from the post-Q2 peak. The dividend score ranks in the 85th percentile, and the factor profile overall looks like a quality-and-yield stock that has been caught in a sector de-rating rather than a fundamentals story that has cracked. The bear case centres on supply chain bottlenecks in rocket motors, microelectronics, and engine castings, plus lingering GTF execution risk at Pratt and Whitney. The bull case rests on the $289 billion backlog, 22% year-on-year growth, and management's raised 2026 guidance across sales, EPS, and free cash flow.
The lending market continues to offer nothing that looks like organised short-side pressure. Short interest is just above 1% of the free float, and while that figure has risen 24% over the past month in absolute share terms, it remains in low-single-digit territory in any meaningful sense. Borrow availability is vast, with over 900 million shares available against fewer than 14 million shorted. The cost to borrow is 0.36%, a level that signals no scarcity whatsoever in the lending pool. The ORTEX short score of 31.1 has barely moved in two weeks, confirming that the selling pressure on the stock is not being driven by short-sellers building new positions. Options positioning is only mildly defensive: the put-to-call ratio sits at 0.80, fractionally above its 20-day average of 0.78 and less than one standard deviation from that mean. The 52-week high on the PCR is 1.02, so there is considerable room for hedging activity to intensify before reaching anything that might be described as stressed.
The recent insider register tells a similar story of inaction at the margin. The only trades in October were small option-exercise-and-withhold transactions by the Senior VP and Controller and the Senior VP and Treasurer, the kind of compensation mechanics that carry no conviction signal. Further back, the EVP and General Counsel sold roughly $3.1 million of stock on August 18 at around $224, and the President of Collins Aerospace sold $1.4 million in late July at $210. Net insider activity over the past 90 days is negative at around minus $6.9 million, but the transactions were all in the $200 to $224 range, well above current levels, and none were flagged as part of a 10b5-1 plan. Among institutional holders, BlackRock added 1.5 million shares and State Street added 2.8 million in their most recent reporting periods, both through September 30. Those are incremental additions rather than a significant strategic move, but they push against the narrative of large-scale institutional exit.
The peer group has had a rougher week in several cases. NOC fell 4.3% on the week, and GE dropped 2.7%. LMT fared better, off just 0.4%, and LHX edged slightly positive. RTX's own 2% weekly decline sits in the middle of the range, consistent with broad sector softness rather than company-specific selling.
The October 20 print is now the pivot point. The last two earnings reactions were a 9.2% single-day gain in July and a near-flat move the quarter before that, so the stock has shown it can move sharply on results. What to watch is whether management's commentary on GTF deliveries, supply chain timelines, and free cash flow conversion gives the Street enough to close the gap between the $183 stock and the $233 consensus target.
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