BJ's Wholesale Club reports Q1 2027 results on May 21 with shorts retreating, borrow cheap, and a Street divided on whether the stock's steady re-rating has run ahead of the fundamentals.
Short sellers have been covering into the print. SI has fallen roughly 14% over the past month to 5.3% of the free float — down from a peak near 6.4% in early April. Borrow remains extremely cheap at 0.43% annualised. Availability is ample, with the lending pool comfortably open. Nothing in the lending market points to squeeze pressure or unusual conviction on the short side.
Options tell a similarly neutral story. The put/call ratio is running just above 1.0 — fractionally above its 20-day average of about 1.0 — making it a near-statistically meaningless signal. With a z-score of just 0.31, options traders are neither loading up on downside protection nor expressing particular bullishness. The RSI at 56 and the stock's 3.6% gain on the week suggest measured momentum, not euphoria.
The analyst debate is where things get more interesting. JP Morgan moved against the tape last Thursday, cutting its target from $100 to $90 — the same day the stock was trading around $96 — while keeping a Neutral rating. That note landed in the context of a broader pattern: several bellwether firms including Goldman Sachs (Buy, $123) and Wells Fargo (Overweight, $110) still see meaningful upside, while Barclays (Underweight, $90) and Jefferies (downgraded to Hold earlier in the year) sit on the other side. The bear case rests on a high P/E multiple at about 20.7x, soft comp-store trends, and tariff-related margin pressure. Bulls counter with the durability of the membership model, $20B-plus in revenue, and a private-label portfolio that holds up in a cost-conscious consumer environment. The consensus mean target of $104 implies modest upside from current levels — but with JP Morgan now at $90 and the stock above it, some targets are already in the rearview mirror.
Insider activity adds a small cautionary note. The CEO sold roughly $728,000 in shares in mid-April, and the CFO and Chief Commercial Officer both sold material positions on April 1 — net insider activity over 90 days runs to an estimated $17.5M in sales. These were largely coincident with annual award cycles, but the direction is uniformly outward. History adds a consistent wrinkle: in both of the two prior earnings events on record, BJ fell around 3% on the day and faded slightly further over the following week. The May 21 print will test whether the Street's patience with a slowing-growth, premium-multiple warehouse story has genuine limits — or whether membership resilience and any tariff-related trade-down benefit to warehouse formats can reframe the narrative.
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