NiSource enters its May 11 Q1 2026 earnings call in a notably cleaner position than six weeks ago — short sellers are heading for the exit, borrow costs have collapsed, and analysts have been steadily raising their targets.
The most striking shift has been in short positioning. Short interest has fallen nearly 17% over the past month, dropping from roughly 12.3 million shares in late March to around 10.2 million now — equivalent to 2.1% of the free float. That's a sustained unwind rather than a one-day reversal; the retreat has been almost perfectly linear since mid-April, when shorts peaked near 12 million shares. The lending market reflects the same story: borrow availability has loosened sharply, with cost to borrow now at just 0.30%, down more than 44% on the week and around a quarter below its one-month average. Borrow conditions are as easy as they've been all year.
Options positioning adds little drama to that picture. The put/call ratio is running at 0.33, barely above its 20-day average of 0.33 — a z-score of 0.07 means the market is not doing anything unusual in either direction. The 52-week range for the PCR runs from 0.10 to 1.15, which puts the current reading in the very calm middle. There is no options-driven signal of nervousness ahead of the print.
The Street has been constructive and getting more so. Barclays raised its target to $49 in mid-April, maintaining Overweight. That follows KeyBanc's fresh Overweight initiation at $52 at the end of March — the most bullish target in the recent cohort. Evercore and Citigroup both lifted targets earlier in the year, with Evercore at $50 and Citi at $47, though the latter holds a Neutral rating. The consensus mean price target is $50.79, implying roughly 5.4% upside to the $48.19 close. The PE ratio is 22.8x, with EV/EBITDA at 11.8x — both having drifted modestly higher over 30 days as the stock climbed about 1.5% in the month. Factor scores paint a quietly supportive backdrop: EPS surprise ranks in the 74th percentile, and the dividend score is in the 70th — useful anchors for a regulated utility in a defensive sector.
The bull case centres on rate base growth of 8–10% through 2029 and potential upside from capital expenditure opportunities tied to industrial manufacturing expansion in Indiana, Ohio, and Virginia. The bear case is the standard regulated-utility checklist: renewable supply-chain risk, rate case uncertainty, and interest-rate sensitivity beyond current model assumptions. Neither is new. The lack of fresh catalyst in that debate is arguably why the short interest unwind has been so orderly — there's no obvious conviction trade on either side heading into the quarter.
Institutional ownership is dominated by the index giants, with Vanguard at 13%, BlackRock at 10.8%, and T. Rowe Price holding 10.9%. T. Rowe's last reported position showed a significant addition of nearly 30 million shares as of March 31 — worth watching to see whether that reflects a genuine active conviction build or a period-end rebalancing effect. Peer performance on the week has been mixed, with CNP and SRE eking out small gains while DTE fell 3.4% and CMS dropped 1.3%. NiSource's own 0.6% weekly decline kept it comfortably in the middle of the peer pack.
With the Q1 print five days away, the setup is one of loosening borrow, retreating shorts, and a Street that has been nudging targets upward for months. What the May 11 call needs to address is whether the industrial capital expenditure opportunity in key states is crystallising into firm guidance — and whether the rate base growth trajectory remains intact. That is the question the raised targets have already begun to price in.
See the live data behind this article on ORTEX.
Open NI 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.
