Limbach Holdings enters the back half of its earnings week on fire, with a Q1 2026 beat that sent the stock up 11.6% in a single session and 21.4% over the past week to $114.11 — all while its CFO has been a consistent seller and the Street's published targets sit well below where the market now trades.
The options market telegraphed the turn before Tuesday's close. The put/call ratio collapsed to 0.32 on May 5 — almost 1.2 standard deviations below its 20-day average of 0.89. That reading is close to the lowest in the past year, against a 52-week low of 0.025, signalling a sharp rotation from protection-buying toward call demand. For context, the PCR was running above 2.0 as recently as early April, so the reversal has been dramatic and fast. The Q1 print — which beat EPS estimates by $0.43 according to published reports — appears to be the catalyst that flipped options sentiment from defensive to outright bullish.
Short positioning tells a quieter story, and that contrast matters. Short interest has drifted lower over the past month, falling roughly 9% to around 983,000 shares, with the official FINRA fortnightly count confirming 971,000 shares short at a days-to-cover of six. The borrow market is loose: cost to borrow has declined to 0.43% — down 23% over the past month — and availability remains comfortable. Nothing in the lending data points to a squeeze. Shorts have been trimming into this rally, not fighting it.
The one genuinely interesting ownership wrinkle is the CFO. Jayme Brooks has sold shares on nine separate occasions since mid-March, collecting roughly $1.9 million in aggregate proceeds across a price range of $77 to $100. At the time of those sales, the stock had not yet broken above $100. With the stock now at $114, those transactions look early — and the institutional register is broadly stable, with Thrivent, BlackRock, and Vanguard among the largest holders making only small incremental moves in Q1.
On valuation, the stock's re-rating has been swift. The P/E multiple has expanded by about 7 points over 30 days to 24.5x, and EV/EBITDA has widened by more than 1.3 turns to 14.4x. The mean analyst price target of $116.60 is now essentially at-market — the most recent recorded action was JP Morgan's March 26 cut to $90 Neutral, while Stifel has held a Buy but trimmed targets several times since mid-2025, most recently to $104. Both targets are now below the current price. The company ranks in the 90th percentile on EPS surprise, a factor score consistent with the beat pattern. The ORTEX short score of 61 sits in a range it has occupied for most of the past two weeks, without any fresh extreme signal in either direction. On the factor scorecard, the EV/EBIT rank of 28 is modest, suggesting valuation is no longer cheap by that measure even if momentum is clearly constructive.
The sector backdrop is broadly supportive. Peer STRL surged 52% in a single session and 71% on the week — an outlier likely tied to its own results. PRIM added 20% on the week and ORN gained 34%, confirming that the construction and engineering group has been broadly bid. LMB is running in line with the peer group rather than leading it, which makes the earnings beat the clearer driver than a sector re-rating alone.
What to watch next: the earnings call transcript is now available, and the degree to which management elaborates on M&A pipeline and margin guidance — the two pillars of the bull and bear case — will tell investors whether the beat represents a structural inflection or a single strong quarter.
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