VSAT heads into its May 28 earnings print having nearly doubled in price over the past month — now the market needs the numbers to catch up.
The stock has risen 31% in a month to $81.40, including a 9% surge on Tuesday alone and a 15% gain over the past week. That momentum has drawn defensive options interest. The put/call ratio has climbed to 0.64, well above its 20-day average of 0.41 and running at roughly 1.5 standard deviations above trend. The shift is notable because as recently as early May the PCR sat near 0.30, signalling calls dominated. Protection-buying has picked up sharply in the past two weeks, right as the stock broke higher. Borrow conditions remain relaxed — availability is 671%, far from any squeeze territory — and the cost to borrow, while up roughly 18% on the week, is still barely above 0.5%. Short interest at 7.5% of the free float is meaningful but has edged down over the month and shows no sign of a forced unwind.
The bull and bear cases essentially argue over the same balance sheet. Bulls point to the Inmarsat acquisition expanding both geographic and defense revenue exposure, and to management's focus on cost synergies. Revenue grew 4% year-on-year last quarter, EBITDA margins came in above 31%, and operating cashflow of $258 million gives the business genuine operational heft. Bears counter that net debt of nearly $5.9 billion against trailing EBITDA gives a leverage ratio above 3.6x — a burden that leaves little room for error. The communications services segment, which drives the bulk of revenue, has been flagged repeatedly as growing too slowly. Analyst targets reflect that tension: B. Riley lifted its target to $94 in late April, while the Street consensus sits at $65.50 — well below where the stock now trades at $81.40. That gap matters. Multiple analysts have been raising targets all year, yet the stock has outrun even the most optimistic among them. JP Morgan upgraded to Overweight in late 2025 with a $50 target; Barclays moved to Equal-Weight in April with $49. Neither keeps pace with the current price.
History adds context. The last two confirmed earnings events both produced large moves: the February 2026 print generated a 23.6% one-day jump and a 30.5% five-day gain; the event before that delivered a 5.1% day-one move and a 17.5% five-day follow-through. The pattern is one of outsized post-earnings rallies — but both of those events helped fuel the run-up that preceded this print, and the stock is now priced accordingly. Among correlated peers, CIEN gained 15% on the week and HLIT surged 35%, suggesting the broader sector uplift has carried VSAT rather than vice versa — raising the question of whether the stock's premium holds once the macro tailwind is stripped away.
The print is therefore less about whether Viasat is recovering and more about whether the pace of debt reduction and communications segment growth justifies a stock trading at a steep premium to every analyst's published target.
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