TXT reports Wednesday after market close with options positioning tilted toward caution and short sellers pulling back from a March peak. The stock has slipped 4% over the past week to close Friday at $87.96, underperforming several aerospace peers that posted smaller losses.
Short interest dropped to 2.79% of the float as of April 23, down more than 9% over the past month after spiking in mid-March when shares short briefly topped 6.9 million. Borrowing costs remain cheap at 0.48%, and utilisation sits at just 1.96% — well below the 52-week high of 8.97% hit in March. The retreat suggests bears have backed away heading into the print. Put/call ratio climbed to 1.40, running above its 20-day average of 1.26 and marking the highest defensive positioning since late April. That shift accelerated over the past week, rising from the low-1.20s into more cautious territory.
The Street is divided. Jefferies trimmed its target from $115 to $110 earlier this month while holding a Buy rating — the second such cut since February. Wells Fargo launched coverage at Equal-Weight with a $92 target in early April, below the consensus mean of $99.39. Citigroup has nudged its Neutral-rated target up twice this year, most recently to $99, while JPMorgan lifted to $90 in late January after the last earnings miss. The pattern suggests analysts see value but remain selective on valuation, particularly as Textron trades at 13.1× earnings — near the middle of its historical range. The company scores in the 95th percentile on dividend metrics and the 71st on EV/EBIT, but momentum scores lag at the 25th percentile for 90-day EPS revisions.
FMR (Fidelity) added 1.9 million shares through late February to lift its stake above 4%, while AQR boosted holdings by 1.8 million shares through March. Insiders netted $32.6 million in sales over 90 days, led by Executive Chairman Scott Donnelly's $1.95 million February transaction. Prior earnings reactions have been choppy: the stock dropped 6.8% the day after January's call and fell 1.7% following an April 23 event. Wednesday's report will test whether the company can deliver margin improvement that justifies a valuation near 1.8× book value while the Street waits for clearer visibility on aerospace recovery and business-jet demand.
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