AIG enters its Q1 2026 earnings call with a notable analyst consensus shift as the backdrop — and a stock trading nearly 14% below where it started the year.
The dominant pre-earnings signal is clear: Wall Street has been steadily trimming targets. Every major firm to act in April moved lower. JP Morgan's Jimmy Bhullar, who updated his view on April 20, cut his target to $86 from $97 while holding a Neutral. Morgan Stanley and Barclays trimmed to $82 and $78 respectively. Wells Fargo and Mizuho also edged down, though all maintained their ratings — the Street's message is that conviction has softened without conviction turning negative. The consensus target of $86.45 implies roughly 17% upside from AIG's current price of $74.80, but that figure has been trending in one direction for weeks. The RSI sits at 37, deep in oversold territory, reflecting the extent of the YTD drawdown.
The bull case rests on AIG's P&C underwriting turnaround and the strength of investment income, which grew 13% year-over-year to $881 million in recent results. Convex Gross Written Premiums have compounded at 25% over three years, giving bulls a credible growth narrative. Bears counter that underwriting results from Convex and the recently acquired EG business remain a drag, and that AIG's buyback pace has disappointed relative to peers. The stock trades at just 0.89x book value — a discount that either signals deep value or a market that isn't yet willing to credit the turnaround story.
Short sellers are not pressing the thesis. Short interest has fallen 21% over the past month to just 1.3% of free float — a level too low to be a meaningful market signal in isolation. Borrow availability is ample, borrow cost is negligible at 0.52%, and the ORTEX short score of 28.9 has drifted lower across the past two weeks. Options positioning is equally muted: the put/call ratio of 0.80 is fractionally below its 20-day average, with a z-score of -0.69, meaning there's no unusual demand for downside protection. Peers like EG, CNA, and AXS closed mostly lower on the week, suggesting broad sector softness rather than AIG-specific defensiveness.
The institutional ownership picture is stable. Vanguard and BlackRock remain the two largest holders at 12.7% and 9.1% respectively. T. Rowe Price added over 4.6 million shares in the most recent quarter — the largest incremental buy among the top fifteen holders — while GQG trimmed nearly 3 million shares. On the insider side, CEO Peter Zaffino sold 134,150 shares in March at $80.49, worth nearly $10.8 million. That sale came when the stock was meaningfully higher than today, and in the context of routine executive disposals across the C-suite on the same date — less a directional call and more a concentrated single-day event.
The Q1 print is ultimately a test of whether AIG's combined ratio improvements are durable or still uneven — and whether management can deliver underwriting clarity on Convex and EG that the analyst community has been waiting on through an extended period of downward target revisions.
See the live data behind this article on ORTEX.
Open AIG 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.
