Masco Corporation heads into its May 13 Q1 earnings release with a sharp, sudden build in short interest that stands in contrast to an otherwise recovering stock price.
The most striking development is the jump in shorts. Short interest leapt 36% in a single session on May 7, pushing the position to 5.6% of the free float — the highest reading in roughly six weeks, and up 35% on the week. That move is large enough to be meaningful. The ORTEX short score climbed to 43.5 as of May 7, its highest point in the recent 10-day window, after holding near 37-38 throughout April. Despite the spike, the borrow market remains loose: cost to borrow runs at just 0.41%, and that rate has actually eased 13% over the past week. Availability is not under stress. Options positioning is mildly cautious — the put/call ratio runs at 1.35, slightly above its 20-day average of 1.18, though at well below a standard deviation above the mean, this is not a distress signal.
Against that backdrop, the analysts who updated targets after Masco's last earnings print came in broadly constructive. Goldman Sachs and Truist both raised targets to $90, Evercore ISI moved to $86, and Wells Fargo pushed to $82 — all while maintaining positive ratings. JP Morgan's Michael Rehaut lifted his target to $78 but held at Neutral, and Barclays moved from $65 to $78, also without a rating change. Citigroup was the outlier, trimming its target from $84 to $79. Taken together, the Street has nudged higher on targets but remains split on conviction: bulls point to branded product leadership, low leverage, and continued share buyback firepower; bears flag ongoing softness in DIY renovation demand, particularly in the paint market, and argue the stock's 21% one-month rally into the print has compressed the margin of safety. The consensus mean target of $81 implies roughly 13% upside from the current $71.74 close.
The institutional register shows some interesting movement. Wellington Management added over 2 million shares in Q1, and JP Morgan Asset Management added nearly 870,000. Van Eck Associates added more than 2.2 million shares through April. These are not passive-index flows — they suggest active buyers were accumulating during the late-March and April weakness. On the other side, insiders were collectively net sellers in February and March, with the CFO, CEO, and board chairman all reducing exposure. Net insider selling over 90 days reached roughly $7.3 million. The pattern is not unusual for a company whose stock had rallied sharply, but it does mean no C-suite accumulation to lean on as a bullish signal.
Peer performance adds further context. SSD and GFF fell 2.1% and 2.9% on the day respectively, while BLDR slid 2.5%, suggesting the building products group is facing broader headwinds. MAS, by contrast, closed down just 0.26% — a notable divergence. The May 13 print is therefore less about whether Masco can grow sales and more about whether the company can defend margins against renovation demand softness at a valuation that already reflects a significant recovery.
See the live data behind this article on ORTEX.
Open MAS 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.
