MGE Energy heads into its May 19 Q1 earnings date with short sellers at their lightest positioning of the past two months, while the options market shows the most call-dominant sentiment of the year.
The short-selling picture has shifted meaningfully since early April. Short interest peaked near 522,000 shares borrowed at the end of March, when macro jitters were at their most acute. It has since unwound to roughly 446,000 shares — about 1.2% of free float — a level 14.8% below where it was a month ago. That broad retreat in shorting pressure is the dominant theme in the positioning data right now. The week-on-week uptick of 0.75% is trivially small against that backdrop. Borrow is cheap at 0.45% annualised, easing 12% on the week, and availability in the lending pool is ample — both confirming there is no squeeze dynamic and no conviction among short sellers to rebuild positions ahead of the print.
Options positioning reinforces that picture, but with a bullish tilt. The put/call ratio has been drifting down steadily since late March, when it briefly touched 2.44. It's now 0.83, just below its 20-day average of 0.86, and carries a mildly negative z-score of -0.53. That means options flow is leaning call-heavy by recent standards — the most call-dominant setup in months. The contrast with the March defensive peak is stark: investors who were hedging hard six weeks ago have rotated into a more constructive stance as the stock has recovered 2.5% over the past month to $80.75.
The Street, however, remains sceptical of the valuation. Morgan Stanley's Stephen Byrd — the only named analyst with recent activity — has maintained an Underweight rating and trimmed his target to $78 in late April, putting the mean analyst target at $78.50 against a current price of $80.75. That means the stock is trading about 2.8% above the consensus target, a mild negative signal on return potential. The valuation data supports some of that hesitation: a P/E of 18.9x and EV/EBITDA of around 11x are not demanding for a regulated utility, but the stock's modest dividend yield of 2.48% and a forward EPS growth rank in just the 26th percentile don't offer strong upside catalysts. The firm's ORTEX short score is a low 30, consistent with the light and retreating short interest. Where the data does stand out is on historical earnings delivery: MGEE ranks in the 81st percentile for EPS surprise, meaning it has a strong track record of beating expectations.
Institutional ownership is tightly clustered around the index heavyweights. BlackRock holds 15.6% and added around 60,000 shares as of end-April. Vanguard follows at 12.4%, adding a more modest 23,500 shares. State Street and Victory Capital also added incrementally over the same period. None of these moves are dramatic enough to signal conviction either way; this is largely passive accumulation tracking index weights. The one genuinely new-entry name in the holder list is DePrince, Race & Zollo, which reported a fresh 277,000-share position for Q1 2026. Insider data is too stale to draw conclusions, with the most recent trades dating back to early January.
The next milestone is the May 19 Q1 earnings release. The two previous prints produced subdued market reactions — a 0.6% one-day decline in February and essentially no move in the companion announcement. For a quiet mid-cap regulated utility, that pattern of non-events is the base case. What to watch is whether the Street's cautious valuation framing — a cluster of holds and an Underweight target just below the current price — begins to shift, particularly if management offers any update on capital expenditure plans against a backdrop of falling short interest and constructive options flow.
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