Herbalife enters a fresh week with a notable contradiction: the stock is up 17% over the past month, yet a cluster of insiders just rang the register at the top.
The insider story is the sharpest angle this week. On May 1 and May 4, five senior executives — including the CEO, both COOs, the Chief Legal Officer, and the Principal Accounting Officer — all sold shares at prices between $15.82 and $16.28. The CEO sold nearly 7,900 shares for roughly $128,000. The COO Lamberti sold over 8,200 shares across both dates. Combined, net insider sales over the 90-day window total approximately 68,000 shares, worth around $1.09 million. Every transaction carries a low significance score of 1 out of 10, and coordinated small sales across multiple executives often reflect scheduled plan activity rather than discretionary conviction. Still, the breadth of the selling — six different officers on two consecutive trading days — is worth flagging against a backdrop of a 17% monthly price run.
Short positioning is quietly easing, which adds texture to the picture. Short interest runs at 7.9% of the free float — meaningful but moving in the right direction for bulls. It has drifted lower by roughly 1.9% over the past week and 3.3% over the past month, now close to 8.1 million shares. The lending market remains relaxed: borrowing costs have slid from around 0.58% in late March to 0.47% today, a 30-day decline of about 16%. Availability is ample, with only 16% of the lendable pool currently drawn, well below the 52-week peak of 21.3% — no signs of squeeze dynamics in the borrow market at all.
Options positioning is the most striking signal of the week. Call demand has surged to the point where the put/call ratio has collapsed to just 0.42 — nearly three standard deviations below its 20-day average of 0.68. That is the second-lowest reading of the past year, touched once before on April 30. Put another way, options traders are positioned with unusual bullishness right now, perhaps chasing the recent price momentum. Peers USNA and NUS both lost around 1-2% on the week while HLF pulled back only 2.2%, suggesting the stock held up better than direct comparables on the dip.
The Street is cautiously positioned around that same price level. The consensus mean target is $18.00, implying roughly 10% upside from the current $16.26 close. The most recent analyst move came from RBC Capital, which lowered its target from $17 to $16 on April 28 while maintaining a Sector Perform rating — nudging its target below the current price. Citigroup holds a Buy with a $21 target, set in February. EV/EBITDA of around 5x looks undemanding, and the PE of 5.8x is cheap on its face. Factor scores are more nuanced: EPS momentum over 30 days ranks in the 90th percentile, and EPS surprise in the 85th — the company has been beating estimates consistently. But the short score sits at 57, and the short-score rank is only in the 15th percentile, reflecting that the bearish positioning, while not extreme, remains a persistent feature of the ownership structure.
Institutional ownership is concentrated in a handful of active managers. Baupost holds nearly 9% of shares, Route One just under 8%, and both last reported in December — their current posture is unknown. Vanguard and BlackRock together account for another 19%, with both adding modestly in recent filings. FMR (Fidelity) is the notable mover in the holder list, adding 3.65 million shares as of February, which accounts for most of their 3.83 million current stake.
The next confirmed earnings date is not yet set — the history shows a May 6 announcement, which is today. What to watch is whether the convergence of executive selling, low options hedging, and a cooling short base around the $16 level proves to be a turning point in the monthly trend, or whether the bullish options bias gets validated by the freshly reported numbers.
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