HLMN heads into its Q1 2026 earnings today with short sellers noticeably more active than they were a month ago.
The headline positioning story is a sharp build in short interest. SI % FF has jumped to 3.3% — up 44% over the past month and 23% over the past week alone, the fastest accumulation rate in the visible history. Utilization has climbed in parallel, rising from around 3.4% in mid-March to 6.6% now, approaching the 52-week high of 8.6%. Borrow remains cheap at 0.51%, so this is not a squeeze setup — fresh shorts are still getting in with ease. Options positioning adds a separate layer: the put/call ratio hit 0.11, nearly two standard deviations above its 20-day mean of 0.09, the most defensive relative reading in recent weeks. The price itself, at $8.78, has recovered about 7.5% over the past month but slipped fractionally in the past week, lagging most industrial peers — IR, ITW, and LECO all held their ground or fell by less over the same period, while gained more than 7% on the week.
The bull case rests on organic growth momentum and Koch acquisition contribution. Koch added roughly $45 million in revenue, lifting the overall sales base by 3%, and management has outlined organic growth of 5% plus 6% from M&A annually through 2027–2030. The pre-cut grab-and-go program is projected to add 18% to relevant category sales. Bears counter with the drag from Robotics & Digital Solutions, which posted a 1.1% year-over-year decline in Q4, and concentration risk around key retail accounts PrimeSource and HD. The analyst community stays broadly constructive — Canaccord Genuity maintained a Buy and $14 target as recently as late March, and Benchmark trimmed its target to $14 from $15 in February while keeping Buy. Barclays sits at Equal-Weight with a $10 target. The consensus mean sits at $12.13 against an $8.78 price, implying roughly 38% upside on paper, though the stock's distance from those targets reflects persistent scepticism about execution.
The insider record is worth flagging. Every trade in the past 90 days has been a sale — the CEO, COO, CLO, and Chief Accounting Officer all sold in March and early April at prices between $8.14 and $8.29. Net insider outflows totalled around $1.3 million. None of the trades were large in absolute terms, but the breadth of selling across the C-suite at prices below today's close is a data point the market will weigh alongside the print.
The two most recent earnings reactions were starkly different: a 3.6% drop on the day in March 2026 that recovered to a 3.4% gain over five days, versus an 11.9% single-day fall in February 2026 that extended to a 15% five-day loss. Today's print will test whether the Koch integration and organic growth trajectory are enough to shift that pattern.
See the live data behind this article on ORTEX.
Open HLMN on ORTEX →ORTEX Market Intelligence content is generated by AI from a snapshot of ORTEX's proprietary data. Content is informational only and does not constitute investment advice.
