VSAT Slides 10% in a Week With Earnings Two Weeks Out

Viasat heads into its November 6 earnings report having lost more than a fifth of its value in the past month, yet options traders are piling into calls, not puts, a striking divergence from what the price chart suggests.

The options angle is the most interesting signal right now. The put/call ratio has dropped to 0.34, nearly 1.5 standard deviations below its 20-day average of 0.45. That is one of the more call-heavy readings of the past year, a range that stretches from 0.02 to 1.16. With the stock down 10% on the week and 21% over the past month to $60.17, the tilt toward calls points to a cohort of investors treating the pullback as an entry point rather than a warning. Whether that reflects hedged positioning or directional conviction is impossible to say from the ratio alone, but the gap between price action and options sentiment is the clearest tension in the setup.

Short interest tells a more contained story. Bears hold 8.64% of the free float, a meaningful level, but the position has barely moved on the week, down less than 1%. The monthly picture shows a 9% rise in shares short, suggesting the selloff over October has drawn some incremental short conviction. But the borrow market is not signalling any urgency: the cost to borrow runs at just 0.47%, low by any measure, and availability is running at 439%, meaning there are roughly four shares available to borrow for every one already borrowed. The 52-week tightest reading was 298%, and the market has only loosened since then. There is no squeeze pressure in the lending pool.

The Street is conspicuously bullish relative to where the stock is trading. The consensus mean price target is $103.94, implying roughly 73% upside from the current price. The most recent analyst actions, from Needham in August and B. Riley Securities in May, both raised Buy-rated targets to $105 and $106 respectively, reflecting optimism around Inmarsat synergies, spectrum assets, and the ViaSat-3 satellite programme. Barclays upgraded in April, though only to Equal-Weight with a $49 target, a level the stock has now fallen back below. The EV/EBITDA multiple has compressed modestly over the past 30 days, now at 8.4x. The PE sits at a stretched 395x, reflecting how thin near-term earnings remain. Factor scores are mixed: EPS momentum over 30 days ranks in the 72nd percentile, a positive, but the 90-day EPS momentum rank has collapsed to the 3rd percentile, and the EV/EBIT rank sits at just the 4th percentile, confirming that valuation is a genuine headwind for quantitative buyers.

On the shareholder register, Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan Board, CPP Investment Board and Triton LuxTopHolding filed Schedule 13D amendments on the position they collectively hold, a disclosure that warrants attention. All three are listed as 13D activists under ORTEX's EDGAR ingestion, and they filed amendments as recently as May 2025, trimming slightly from 3.71% to 3.68% of class. Meanwhile, T. Rowe Price added 1.48 million shares in the quarter ending September, a substantial increase, and BlackRock added 168,000 shares, keeping its position at 15% of shares outstanding. Baupost Group, by contrast, cut its stake sharply, from 7.89% to 2.15%, as last disclosed in September 2025. All 13D/G positions are as last disclosed and holders dropping below the 5% threshold may exit without a further filing.

Insider activity over the past 90 days has been uniformly in one direction. The SVP of Viasat Government, the CFO, and the SVP of Commercial all recorded open-market or plan-based sales in September and October, for a net of roughly 17,900 shares sold and a combined net value of around $1.3 million disposed. Every open-market sale was conducted under a 10b5-1 plan, which limits the signal these trades carry. Plan-based sales are pre-scheduled and do not reflect real-time sentiment. Still, the absence of any discretionary buying at these prices is noted.

The next focal point is the November 6 earnings release. The two most recent post-earnings moves were a gain of 3.5% the day after results in August and a decline of 0.3% after the prior print, both modest. With options heavily skewed toward calls, short interest running at its monthly high, and the stock trading roughly 40% below the mean analyst target, the question heading into the print is whether the commercial satellite ramp and government segment performance can close any of that credibility gap on guidance.