MetLife Shorts Retreat as Analysts Lift Targets

MET reports Q3 results on November 4 with short sellers stepping back and the analyst community broadly raising its view of the stock.

Short interest has fallen sharply. Positions dropped roughly 13% over the past month to just 1.6% of the free float, a level that places MET firmly in low-conviction bear territory. The week-on-week decline alone was nearly 7%, and borrow costs have followed, falling 22% over the same stretch to 0.37%. With availability at effectively maximum levels, there is no friction whatsoever in the lending market. This is not a stock that short sellers are pressing into earnings.

The analyst community has moved in one direction over the past month: up. TD Cowen raised its target to $114 on October 21, keeping its Buy. JP Morgan and Wells Fargo both lifted targets to $110 while holding Overweight. Barclays made the largest move in the group, pushing its target to $111 from $97 in early October. The mean target across the consensus sits at $107.63 against a current price of $100.02, implying around 7.6% upside. Forward EPS revisions are pointing in the same direction, ranking in the 94th percentile of the ORTEX universe on 12-month forward year-on-year increases. The one counterpoint is EPS surprise history, which ranks only in the 16th percentile, meaning the company has tended to deliver results that land close to or below the bar the Street has set. That gap between revision momentum and actual delivery is the core tension in the bull case.

Options positioning is marginally less defensive than the recent trend. The put/call ratio came in at 1.43 on Friday, below its 20-day average of 1.50 and 1.3 standard deviations beneath that mean. MET's options market structurally carries elevated put hedging, but into this print traders have pulled back slightly on that protection rather than adding to it. The stock itself has held up well, gaining 5% over the past month to $100.02 and gaining 1.2% over the past week, broadly in line with closest peer PRU at 1.3% and slightly behind PFG and AFL, both up around 2.8%.

On the 13D register, the MetLife Policyholder Trust holds a 16.1% stake and is listed as an activist filer, down slightly from 16.2% at its prior disclosure. Stakes are as last disclosed around the 5% threshold; holders dropping below that level may not file again. The institutional base is otherwise conventional, with BlackRock adding 1.6 million shares to 8.1% and Dodge & Cox holding steady at 7.6%.

The print will test whether the company's actual Q3 delivery can close the gap between a Street that has been steadily raising targets and a surprise history that has more often than not undershot expectations.