Amer Sports has reported Q1 2026 results and the Street's immediate reaction is to push targets higher — the question now is how much of that bullish signal is already priced into a stock that bounced 2% on the day but remains deeply below consensus.
The analyst response to the print is notably constructive. Both Truist Securities and UBS lifted their targets on May 20, with UBS moving to $62 — one of the highest targets on the stock — while maintaining Buy. Truist nudged its target to $50, also on Buy. The direction of travel is unambiguous: no downgrades, no target cuts in the immediate aftermath of the release. The mean price target now stands at $49.60, implying roughly 47% upside from the current $33.83. That gap is large enough to suggest the market is applying a meaningful discount to the bull case, likely reflecting ongoing uncertainty around tariffs, China macro conditions, and the pace of brand-awareness gains for Arc'teryx outside Asia.
Options positioning has eased from the pre-earnings defensive extreme. The put/call ratio dropped from 0.74 on May 15 to 0.62 by May 19, and now reads 0.62 against a 20-day mean of 0.44. The z-score of 0.93 is elevated but not alarming — a mild residual hedge rather than fresh fear. Short interest is a secondary story here. At 2% of the float, bears hold a modest position. Short shares ticked up roughly 4% over the past week, reversing some of the covering seen in the prior weeks when SI fell from around 12.8 million shares in early May to a trough near 10.8 million. The borrow market remains entirely unconstrained: availability is extraordinarily high, and cost to borrow has actually eased nearly 19% over the past week to 0.40%. There is no lending-market pressure of any kind.
The bull case is centred on Arc'teryx and China. Growth in the Asia-Pacific region has run at 43–57% over the past six quarters, with Arc'teryx generating roughly 70% of that regional revenue. Full-year 2024 revenues came in at $5.2 billion, and the company has used IPO proceeds to cut debt from $3.2 billion to $1.7 billion. The bear case is more structural: low brand awareness for Arc'teryx outside China, a 36% revenue exposure to the Americas where macro conditions are uncertain, and a valuation that — at roughly 25x trailing earnings and 13x EV/EBITDA — already prices in healthy execution. EPS momentum factor scores are supportive (68th percentile on 30-day momentum, 72nd on 90-day), but the 12-month forward EPS growth estimate ranks in only the 18th percentile, suggesting the Street's optimism is concentrated in near-term beats rather than a structural re-rating.
The institutional holder base is anchored by ANTA Sports at nearly 40% of shares, with Tencent at 5.4% and Fountainvest at 5.9% — three Asia-connected names holding over half the company. Among active managers, Point72 built a position of nearly 10 million shares in the March quarter, adding roughly 8 million shares. Viking Global added 2.5 million shares and Marshall Wace added 2.6 million. D.E. Shaw trimmed by 2.7 million. The net direction from hedge funds in Q1 was accumulation. Insider activity in mid-April was limited to modest sales by the CFO and a divisional CEO following award grants — routine compensation activity with low significance scores rather than a directional signal.
VFC and RL both fell around 4–5% on the week, highlighting that sector headwinds are real. BIRK dropped 14% over the same period. Against that backdrop, AS's flat week — up under 1% — looks defensively acceptable rather than strong. The earnings outcome, the analyst target lifts, and the positioning reset together define the next chapter: whether the $33–$34 level holds as a post-earnings floor, or whether the macro and currency headwinds that compressed the stock over the past month reassert themselves.
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