Cross Country Healthcare heads into Monday's Q1 2026 earnings with a headline contradiction: the stock has exploded 37.5% in a month, while the analyst who championed it just walked away.
Wedbush's Michael Piccolo downgraded CCRN to Neutral from Outperform on May 7 — the morning before the earnings report — and cut his target from $15.00 to $13.25. That's a jarring reversal. He had upgraded the stock to Outperform in March, lifting the target from $11.00 to $15.00. Benchmark retains a Buy with a $14.00 target, but that lone buy-side voice now sits against seven Hold ratings. The consensus price target stands at $11.38 — roughly 13% below where the stock closed Thursday at $13.09. That gap between the consensus anchor and the current price sets up a valuation debate the Q1 print will need to resolve. Analyst-implied upside scores in the 92nd percentile relative to the broader market, but that's largely a function of the stock having run hard into a hold-heavy consensus.
The bull case rests on the pending Aya Healthcare acquisition at $18.61 per share — a level that implies another 42% from here if the deal closes. Bears point to the operational deterioration underneath: Q1 2025 revenue of $293.4 million fell 23% year-over-year, EBITDA tumbled 44%, and the 2025 revenue estimate was subsequently revised down to $1.17 billion. The Q1 2026 consensus calls for estimated revenue of roughly $237 million — a further step down that reflects continued softness in healthcare travel staffing demand. EPS momentum is genuinely strong, ranking in the 96th percentile over 90 days, suggesting estimates may have been sufficiently reset. But EPS surprise history ranks at just the 1st percentile, meaning beats have been rare.
Short sellers are not pressing the thesis here. Short interest has fallen 57% over the past month to just 2.6% of the free float — from nearly 2 million shares in early April to around 839,000 today. Borrow costs remain negligible at 0.59%, and availability in the lending pool is wide open. That unwind coincides almost exactly with the stock's 30% rally, pointing to short covering rather than fresh conviction. Options positioning is similarly muted — the put/call ratio of 0.69 runs essentially in line with its 20-day average of 0.69, with a z-score near zero. There is no meaningful hedging signal from either the short book or the options market.
The Q1 print is therefore less a test of operating momentum — which the market has already partially priced via the deal premium — and more a test of whether management can defend the deal rationale and timeline at a price that has now run past the average analyst target.
See the live data behind this article on ORTEX.
Open CCRN 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.
