CNX Resources heads into the back end of May with the stock off 7% on the week and a persistent analyst consensus pointing to limited upside from here.
The analyst picture is unusually bearish for a stock of this size. The mean price target of $38.91 sits modestly above the current $34.73 close, but the direction of recent moves tells the real story. Mizuho this morning kept its Neutral rating and lowered its target to $42 from $44 — a trim that follows a pattern stretching back through the year. Truist initiated in March with a Sell at $35. Barclays has held Underweight across multiple updates, most recently citing $36. Morgan Stanley and Piper Sandler both rate CNX Underweight as well. The factor score for analyst recommendation divergence ranks in the 95th percentile — meaning CNX sits among the most consensus-bearish names in the universe by that measure. The bull case centres on Utica productivity gains and rising AI/data-centre demand for natural gas. The bear case is volume decline, with management guiding to a 3% drop from 2024 levels, and free cash flow that came in at just $66 million in FY25.
The most remarkable shift in this stock over the past month is in the short interest data — and the direction is a meaningful cover, not a squeeze. Short interest peaked near 20 million shares around April 30 and has come down sharply to roughly 15.2 million, representing 11.3% of the free float. That is still a high level in absolute terms, but the 21% reduction over 30 days is the largest structural change in the positioning picture. Borrow costs have drifted with it, easing to just 0.41% — low enough to impose minimal cost on any remaining shorts. Availability is ample at roughly 700% of short interest, meaning there is no supply pressure in the lending market and new shorts can enter easily. The short score of 59 is elevated but stable, inching up only marginally over the past week. Overall, the positioning looks like a managed unwind rather than a capitulation.
Options traders have swung sharply bullish relative to recent history, but that shift deserves context. The put/call ratio is running at 0.37 — well below the 20-day average of 0.61 and nearly 1.5 standard deviations below the mean. A week ago, the PCR was above 0.71 and at the 52-week high. The rotation from maximum defensiveness to near-minimum protectiveness over just five sessions is striking. It coincides with the stock falling through the week, which makes the options repricing harder to read as simple bullish conviction. It may instead reflect the exhaustion of put hedges placed before the late-April earnings print.
The earnings history reinforces why investors were defensive. The April 30 Q1 results produced a 3.7% one-day drop and an 8.6% five-day loss — the sharpest post-earnings reaction in the data. The May 7 print produced a smaller 2.3% one-day move. No next earnings date is currently scheduled, removing the near-term binary catalyst. The PE ratio at 9.9x and EV/EBITDA at 5.4x frame CNX as cheap on trailing metrics, and the EPS surprise factor scores in the 90th percentile, meaning the company has a strong track record of beating estimates. But the forward picture is more complicated: forward EPS year-on-year growth ranks in just the 11th percentile, reflecting expectations for earnings to shrink from here.
Peers are not offering much shelter. AR dropped 6.7% on the week, GPOR fell 6.7%, BKV shed 5.9%, and RRC slid 5.5%. EQT was relatively resilient at -2.2%. The sector-wide weakness dulls the signal from CNX's own decline, but the stock has underperformed into a period when natural gas names were supposed to benefit from rising demand expectations. Whether the gap between CNX's depressed consensus ratings, its improving operational metrics, and the sector price action closes — or widens — at the next catalyst is the central question worth watching.
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