Block reports Q1 2026 results on May 7 with the stock up nearly 20% over the past month — a recovery that has stripped out much of the short pressure that built through the first quarter.
The most striking shift in positioning is how quickly short sellers have pulled back. Short interest has fallen from roughly 5.3% of the free float in late March to 3.7% now — a decline of more than 8% over the past week alone and 16% over the past month. That unwind has happened as the stock has ripped higher, suggesting covering rather than new conviction. Cost to borrow is a negligible 0.42%, and availability is genuinely loose, meaning there is no structural impediment to new shorts if sentiment sours post-print. Options positioning leans constructive: the put/call ratio is running at 0.59, slightly below its 20-day average of 0.66 and well off the defensive highs near 0.80 that prevailed in late March. Together, the positioning picture is not one of aggressive hedging — it looks more like a market that has already moved toward optimism ahead of the number.
The analyst community has moved in the same direction. Truist Securities raised its target to $81 after upgrading Block to Buy in March. Cantor Fitzgerald lifted its target to $88. BTIG holds at $90 with a Buy. BMO initiated at Market Perform with a $74 target — essentially at the current price — making it the lone voice of restraint. The mean target across the Street is $86.53, implying about 20% upside from the $71.81 close, though the range between BMO's $74 and BTIG's $90 captures a genuine debate. Bulls point to a projected 22% year-over-year gross profit growth to $2.8 billion, Cash App's 59 million monthly transacting actives, and a management team focused on high-return investment with disciplined expense control. Bears flag take rate compression, rising competition from OS-level wallets, and ongoing regulatory risk around buy-now-pay-later products.
One note on insiders: the CFO sold just over $2.3 million in shares at $75 on April 21 — a small but visible pre-earnings exit at a price above where the stock trades today. It is the most significant insider transaction over the past 90 days by value, though trade significance scores were low and the rest of the selling was routine in scale. The prior two earnings prints produced outsized moves: Block surged 18% in a single session after the Q3 report and 23% after Q4, with the five-day moves extending even further. The May 7 print will test whether gross profit growth is tracking to the 22% bull case target and whether Cash App engagement can sustain the kind of upside surprises that drove those prior reactions.
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