Blue Owl Capital heads into its June 4 earnings release with short sellers adding pressure, the stock sitting near multi-month lows, and the Street still broadly cautious after a wave of target cuts.
Short interest is the standout feature here. It has climbed to 19.6% of the free float — up from 18.4% at the start of April and the highest level of the past six weeks. The move has been steady and deliberate rather than a spike: shorts added roughly 8 million shares through April and into May, then paused around May 14-15 before nudging higher again. At 125.6 million shares short, this is genuine conviction from the bear side. The cost to borrow tells an interesting side story — it spiked sharply to 5.4% on May 13 before collapsing back to just over 1% by the end of the week, suggesting a brief scramble for borrows that quickly resolved. Borrow availability currently reads at 172%, which is tight but workable, well above the 52-week low of 32% seen earlier in the year. The short score of 66.4 is the highest of the past two weeks, having climbed steadily from 62.9 on May 6.
Options positioning has eased from extreme defensiveness, though the put/call ratio of 1.29 remains elevated in absolute terms. It has drifted below its 20-day average of 1.34 — a slight softening in hedging demand relative to recent weeks — but the ratio is still well clear of the 52-week low of 0.51. The most notable shift is the trend direction: the PCR ran as high as 1.90 in early April, and its gradual decline through May suggests some of the most aggressive downside protection is being unwound. That move sits slightly at odds with the continued build in short interest — shorts are adding while options hedgers are modestly pulling back.
The Street is in an uncomfortable middle ground. The mean analyst price target is $12.63, implying substantial upside from the current $9.43 close — but that headline number masks a wide dispersion. TD Cowen reiterated Buy with a $14 target as recently as May 18. But JPMorgan, UBS, and Barclays all cluster around $9.50-$10.00 with Neutral or Equal-Weight ratings, and Goldman Sachs slashed its target from $14 to $9 in early April. The bulls rest their case on $307 billion in total managed assets, the durability of closed-end draw-down fund structures, and what they see as a disciplined expense base. Bears point to a 5% cut to 2027 earnings estimates, private credit stress, and high concentration risk. EPS momentum scores of 21 and 19 over 30 and 90 days respectively confirm the downward revisions are real. The forward earnings yield of 9.8% and a dividend score ranking in the 98th percentile provide some valuation floor, but the PE multiple at 10.2x has compressed by 0.38x over 30 days — a slow grind lower that tracks the price action.
On the ownership side, Capital Research added 21.9 million shares to bring its stake to 17.8% as of April 30 — by far the largest reported change among top holders. FMR (Fidelity) added 6.1 million shares over the same period to reach 11.7%. Those are meaningful additions from two of the largest passive and active managers. Against that, the most recent insider activity on record — from February 13 — consisted entirely of sells from the General Counsel and COO at $12.30, now well above the current price. The most recent meaningful buying cluster was in December 2025, when co-CEOs Doug Ostrover and Marc Lipschultz, along with founder Craig Packer, bought a combined $6 million worth of stock at roughly $15.06 — also above where the stock trades today.
The last earnings print on April 30 produced a 12.4% one-day gain and a 16.6% five-day gain, a genuinely strong post-results reaction. Close peers BX and KKR fell 6.9% and 6.6% respectively on the week, while ARES dropped 2.1% — making OWL's 5.7% weekly decline look less like idiosyncratic weakness and more like sector-wide de-rating. TPG fared worst among the group, down 8.5%.
The June 4 print is the next pivot point. Given the strong April reaction, the short build since then, and the divide between institutional buying and analyst caution, the focus will be on whether private credit conditions have stabilised and whether management updates its 2027 guidance.
See the live data behind this article on ORTEX.
Open OWL 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.
