CBSH: Analysts lift targets as shorts quietly retreat

Commerce Bancshares heads into the back half of May with short sellers trimming back and options traders leaning more bullish than usual — a quiet but consistent improvement in positioning against a stock that has lagged its regional-bank peers on the week.

The clearest shift in positioning is in options. Call buyers are running the book right now, with the put/call ratio at 0.67 — more than one and a half standard deviations below its 20-day average of 0.70. That is the most call-skewed reading in recent weeks, suggesting investors are angling for upside rather than hedging against a fall. Short interest reinforces the cautious-to-constructive tilt. At 3.75% of the free float, it has been drifting lower all month — down roughly half a percent on the week and down more than 11% from the mid-April peak above 4.2%. Borrowing remains extremely cheap at 0.46% annually. Availability is also very loose, with lending-pool demand running at only 1.8% of total supply — the least constrained it has been since late April. Nothing in the borrow market signals any stress or squeeze dynamic; this is a stock where shorts are reducing, not building.

On the Street, the consensus tone is neutral but edging incrementally higher. Keefe, Bruyette & Woods raised its target to $57 this week — the second lift in three weeks from that firm, which had previously moved to $56 from $54 just before earnings on April 23. TD Cowen and Piper Sandler also bumped their targets modestly around the same time. All three held neutral or market-perform ratings, so the direction of travel is upward but conviction is limited. The mean analyst target is $58.56, roughly 14% above the current price of $51.14. That gap looks meaningful, but every active firm has a neutral-equivalent rating, implying the Street sees fair value as achievable but isn't pushing clients to chase it. Valuation is undemanding: the price-to-earnings multiple sits near 12.1x, and price-to-book is 1.56x — reasonable for a mid-sized Midwest franchise without a premium growth profile.

Factor scores add texture to the Street's measured stance. Forward EPS growth ranks in the 77th percentile — one of the more constructive reads in the regional-bank universe — and the dividend score sits at the 98th percentile, reflecting Commerce's long-standing commitment to returning capital. Near-term EPS momentum is softer, ranking in the 32nd percentile over 90 days, and analyst recommendation divergence scores just a 6 out of 100. The message from the scores: a conservative, dividend-reliable franchise with forward-earnings tailwinds, but not one generating momentum excitement right now.

The stock dropped 1.9% on the week to $51.14, slightly underperforming close peers. CFR fell a steeper 3.1%, while UBSI and UCB both gave back around 2.4%. HOMB and CATY held up better, each down less than 1.6%. Recent earnings reactions have been uniformly muted: the last three prints each produced a first-day decline of between 0.6% and 1.6%, with five-day returns recovering to flat or slightly positive. There is no history here of outsized post-earnings volatility.

The next significant catalyst is likely the next formal analyst-day update or any Fed policy signal that moves the rate curve — the stock's earnings yield, at roughly 8.2%, makes it sensitive to where longer rates settle. With no confirmed next earnings date in the data, the watch item is whether the nascent short-covering trend continues and whether the options call skew deepens, or reverts back toward its recent average.