UTZ heads into its May 6 earnings report with short sellers rapidly unwinding what had been a materially elevated position — yet the analyst community remains firmly on edge.
Short interest peaked at roughly 12.8% of the free float on April 13, then shed nearly five percentage points over the following two weeks to land near 8% by May 1. The one-week change is a 21% drop in borrowed shares. That unwinding looks significant: at the mid-April peak, bears held a position roughly a third larger than where it is now. Borrowing conditions have eased alongside that retreat — cost to borrow has fallen to just 0.46% after briefly touching around 1.9% in late March, and borrow availability is loose, pointing to no meaningful squeeze pressure in the lending market. Options positioning is not pressing the bearish case either: the put/call ratio runs at 0.59, barely a half-standard deviation above its 20-day average of 0.57 and well below the 52-week high of 0.88.
The bull-bear debate is really about valuation credibility. Bulls point to a stock trading at roughly 9.7x earnings and an EV/EBITDA of 9.4x — not demanding for a branded snack company with distribution scale. BTIG initiated with a Buy in mid-April and set a $10 target, a rare constructive new voice on a name that has otherwise seen persistent target cuts. Barclays kept its Overweight but trimmed to $10 from $12 on April 15, and UBS held Neutral while cutting to $8.50 from $10 on April 7 — a pattern of Bulls holding their ratings while quietly marking down their assumptions. The mean analyst target is around $12.30, roughly 60% above the current $7.69 close, which suggests the Street has not abandoned the recovery thesis but is recalibrating how long it takes to play out.
The insider log adds a cautionary note. The CEO sold shares at $10.38 in early January, along with several other executives. The stock has since traded down nearly 26% from those sale prices — a reminder that even those closest to the business misjudged the near-term trajectory. The earnings history is equally mixed: a 16% one-day collapse in February, a 3.4% drop after the May 1 print, and a 2.9% gain in February 2026 paint a volatile and unpredictable post-earnings pattern.
The print will test whether UTZ can defend its margin story at a price level where the gap between the stock and every analyst's target has become too wide to ignore.
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