Cheniere Energy Partners heads into its May 1 Q1 print with the Street leaning bearish and short sellers quietly retreating.
The options market has turned more defensive into the release. The put/call ratio climbed to 0.69, roughly 1.4 standard deviations above its 20-day average of 0.61 — a moderate but meaningful tilt toward downside protection that has built steadily since mid-April. That hedging comes on the back of a soft month for the stock, which has shed 3.4% to close at $62.73, though it has been essentially flat on the week. Closest peer LNG added 2.4% over the same period, suggesting CQP's softness is at least partly stock-specific rather than a broad sector move.
Short sellers, however, are moving in the opposite direction. Bearish positioning has unwound sharply — short interest fell 18% in a single session on April 24 to just 0.11% of the free float, continuing a retreat that has run for the past month. Borrow costs are negligible at 0.52%, and utilization at 22% is a fraction of its 52-week high of 77%. The lending market is offering no resistance to new shorts, but few are taking up the invitation.
The analyst community is harder to encourage about the stock. Every major firm covering CQP carries a bearish or neutral rating — Citigroup at Sell, JPMorgan and Barclays at Underweight, BofA at Underperform, Wells Fargo at Underweight. The mean price target of $59.93 is actually below the current price of $62.73, implying the consensus views the stock as slightly overvalued at current levels. Targets have been revised higher across the board in recent weeks — Morgan Stanley moved to $72, JPMorgan to $63, Citigroup to $55 — but the ratings themselves have not budged. The bull case rests on CQP's contracted LNG revenue and high dividend score, which ranks in the 87th percentile. Bears point to EV/EBITDA of 11.3x and a forward EPS growth rank in the bottom quartile, with the 12-month forward EPS year-on-year increase scoring just 4 out of 100.
Ownership is heavily concentrated: parent Cheniere Energy controls nearly 50% of units, while Blackstone and Brookfield together hold another 42%. With roughly 92% of units locked up among three strategic holders, the float is thin and price-sensitive to any shift in sentiment from the remaining institutional base.
The Q1 report is therefore less a test of whether the LNG infrastructure thesis holds and more a test of whether CQP can deliver distribution visibility that justifies trading above a consensus target set by a uniformly cautious Street.
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