Blackstone exits the week of May 5th in an interesting place: the stock has recovered sharply from its April sell-off, yet the analyst community remains visibly reluctant to get behind the move.
The share price closed at $122.72, up roughly 1% on the week and 8.5% on the month — a meaningful bounce from the lows that followed the Q1 earnings release on April 23. That report drew a swift punishment. The stock dropped 6.2% on the day and extended losses to nearly 3.2% over the following week, the sharpest single-day earnings reaction in the recent history visible in the data. The rebound since then looks less like a conviction re-entry and more like a relief trade.
Short interest is not the story here. At 2.6% of free float — and with borrow availability running at roughly 1,748% — the lending market is about as loose as it gets. There is practically no short pressure in the name. Borrow costs are barely above zero at 0.48%, up around 20% on the week but still negligible in absolute terms. The ORTEX short score of 33.4 sits at the low end of the scale. On May 4th, short interest briefly spiked to around 22.2 million shares before collapsing back to 19.1 million the next day — likely a technical one-day artefact. The direction of travel for shorts is sideways-to-down, not building. Options are moderately defensive — the put/call ratio is 1.59, slightly above its 20-day average of 1.55 but well within normal range and far from the 52-week high of 1.87. Hedging is present but not elevated.
The Street's reaction to April earnings tells the more interesting story. Analyst moves were split sharply after the print. Morgan Stanley cut its target from $215 to $184 while maintaining Overweight — a 14% reduction, and the most aggressive target trim in the bunch. JP Morgan moved in the same direction, lowering to $136 from $142, but held Neutral. TD Cowen, also Neutral-to-positive, trimmed slightly to $140. Against those cuts, Evercore ISI raised its target to $150 from $135, and Oppenheimer — which upgraded the stock to Outperform from Perform in mid-April — lifted to $156. Piper Sandler raised to $130 post-earnings while maintaining a Neutral stance. The mean price target of $143.70 implies roughly 17% upside from current levels, but the dispersion between the most bearish ($118, Goldman Sachs in early April) and most bullish ($190, Citizens) is enormous. The Street is not of one mind.
The bull case rests on Blackstone's scale — over $1 trillion in AUM — and the company's ability to diversify across institutional and private wealth channels. Forward EPS growth ranks in the 73rd percentile on a year-on-year basis, suggesting consensus still sees meaningful earnings progression. The dividend score is in the 91st percentile, reflecting the firm's track record of distributing capital. Bears point to the real estate segment, where earnings remain well below prior-cycle peaks, and to fee-paying AUM deployment timing. The Q1 numbers apparently landed short of what the market needed to see: fee-related earnings and deployment figures drove the 6%-plus sell-off.
The recent insider picture is thin but directional. The Chief Administration Officer sold nearly $3.8 million in stock on May 1, at prices around $125-$126. These were scheduled disposals rather than conviction trades, but they are notable in context: the only recent buying came from independent director Jim Breyer in November 2025, accumulating roughly $4 million at prices between $142 and $151 — well above where the stock now trades. The net 90-day insider position is a modest net buy of $3.8 million, but most of that came from Breyer's purchases months ago at materially higher levels.
Close peers diverged sharply on the week. OWL jumped 21% and ARES gained nearly 9%, while KKR and BX barely moved — suggesting the alternative asset manager recovery trade has been more selective, with Blackstone's relative underperformance standing out against its closest peer group. With no next earnings date yet confirmed, the focus turns to AUM deployment data and any signals on BREIT flows heading into summer.
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