ANDG: Street lifts targets after earnings beat, but shorts have already retreated

Andersen Group delivered a headline-splitting Q1 print on May 12 — sales beat estimates while EPS came in well below — yet the Street response has been uniformly constructive, with four analysts raising targets in a single morning and short sellers having already voted with their feet over the preceding weeks.

The analyst reaction tells the story of the day. Four firms updated targets this morning, all higher. Truist Securities bumped its Buy target from $32 to $42. Baird lifted its Outperform target from $42 to $44. Wells Fargo raised to $38 from $25, and Morgan Stanley moved to $27 from $24, both holding Equal-Weight. That split — two bullish, two neutral — reflects the EPS miss clearly. Consensus sits around $37.67, roughly in line with the current $36.38 price, meaning the Street sees little incremental upside from here at current levels. The stronger guidance raise — full-year sales now guided to $980M–$1.0B versus the prior $955M–$970M range — is the number the bulls are anchoring on.

The short position into earnings had already been cut dramatically, which means the stock's 4.5% week-on-week gain came with relatively little short-covering fuel remaining. Estimated short interest more than halved over the past month, falling roughly 60% from early-April levels of around 3.4 million shares to just 1.24 million by May 12. That unwind accelerated sharply in late April — from over 2.7 million shares to below 1.8 million in a single session around April 24 — before another leg lower this week. The ORTEX short score has dropped meaningfully from 74.9 a week ago to 68.3 now, still elevated in absolute terms but clearly directionally easing. With the free-float percentage unavailable due to data constraints, the raw share count is the best read, and the direction is unambiguous.

Borrow conditions reflect the retreat. Cost to borrow has declined steadily from a high near 5% in early April to 2.64% now, a 30% drop over the month. Availability has loosened in parallel, with the lending-pool tightness measure easing from peak utilization of 67% (hit on April 1) to 47% — still tighter than fully relaxed but a meaningful release from the squeeze conditions that prevailed six weeks ago. There is no sign of a borrow-driven short squeeze; the bears have largely exited on their own terms.

The institutional picture confirms the ownership quality is solid. Brown Advisory entered as the largest holder with nearly 23% of shares, adding over 1.8 million shares in Q1. JP Morgan Asset Management built a fresh 12.7% stake in the same period. Durable Capital Partners, a 10% owner, was an aggressive buyer as far back as December at prices around $16–$21 — now sitting on material gains with the stock near $36. The December cluster of director purchases at $16 tells a similar story: insiders who bought at IPO-adjacent levels are deeply in the money. No insider data is available more recently than mid-December, so the current disposition of those holders is unknown.

The next confirmed event is May 20. Given Q1 included an EPS miss alongside a revenue beat and a guidance raise, what to watch is whether the market re-rates the earnings-quality narrative — specifically whether the gap between top-line momentum and margin delivery narrows in Q2, where guidance already implies a sequential revenue step-down to $190M–$205M from Q1's $241M.