Janus Living heads into its first earnings release as a public company with one of the more unusual setups in the REIT space: a near-unanimous analyst buy chorus, a stock that has already run well past most targets, and a borrow market that has shifted dramatically over the past six weeks.
The analyst story is the clearest signal here. On April 14, ten major firms — including Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, Barclays, Wells Fargo, and RBC Capital — all initiated coverage simultaneously. The cluster of initiations is characteristic of a post-IPO lock-up expiry or secondary offering quiet period lifting. The majority came in with Outperform or Overweight ratings; Goldman was the notable holdout, initiating at Neutral with a $27 target. Most targets cluster between $26 and $28, with Keybanc and Morgan Stanley at the high end at $28. The stock closed Tuesday at $26.25 — already above several of those targets — which means the Street's upside case, while broadly positive, has thinned considerably in just three weeks.
The borrow market tells a striking story of its own. Cost to borrow has collapsed from above 12% in late March to roughly 3% today — a sign that the intense demand for short borrow seen around the IPO period has all but evaporated. Availability is now effectively unconstrained, with the ORTEX availability ratio at 9,999%, meaning shares are abundant relative to existing short positions. Short interest itself fell sharply in mid-April — dropping from around 2.6 million shares to 1.7 million — and has barely moved since. The ORTEX short score of 32 is well below any level that would suggest organised short pressure. Taken together, the borrow picture has gone from tightly contested to wide open in roughly five weeks.
The ownership structure adds important context. Healthpeak Properties holds 74% of the float — a dominant parent stake that compresses the tradeable share base and helps explain why the borrow market was so tight at launch. The CEO, Scott Brinker, bought $2 million worth of stock on March 23 at $20, alongside purchases from the COO and multiple directors on the same day — a coordinated cluster buy that now sits 31% in the money. Vanguard has also established an initial position of 1.75% of shares.
Q1 results just crossed after market close on May 5: FFO of $0.23 beat the $0.22 estimate, but revenue of $200.3 million missed the $208.5 million consensus. Full-year FFO guidance of $0.93–$0.97 per share landed roughly in line with the $0.93 estimate. The print gives the market its first hard look at whether the operating fundamentals of this healthcare REIT justify a stock price that has already moved 31% above the insider buy level and has outpaced most of the Street's freshly inked targets.
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