Las Vegas Sands heads into the back half of May with the Street overwhelmingly bullish on paper — yet the stock closed at $49.75 on Tuesday, more than 28% below the consensus price target of $69.46. That gap is less a vote of confidence than a measure of how far the narrative has slipped.
The most telling move came last week. Macquarie trimmed its target on LVS to $68 from $70 while keeping its Outperform rating — a mild trim in isolation, but it follows a post-earnings wave in late April when multiple analysts raised targets and the stock still fell nearly 10% in a single session. Jefferies had downgraded to Hold before that result, cutting its target from $72 to $61. Morgan Stanley holds at Equal-Weight with a $69 target. Stifel remains the most constructive, with a Buy and a $74 target. The directional picture is clear: most firms see value but have grown less willing to act on it, trimming estimates even where they hold ratings. The mean target of ~$69.50 against a stock trading near $50 implies roughly 40% upside — credible on paper, but the market has been discounting that view for months.
The borrow market offers no drama to match the valuation story. Short interest is a modest 1.7% of the free float — up about 6% on the week and 1.7 percentage points off its late-April peak of around 13.7 million shares. That unwind from early-May highs suggests the bears who pressed the post-earnings drop have been covering rather than building. Cost to borrow runs at just 0.42% annually, roughly where it sat a month ago despite a mid-April spike to 1.18%. Availability is enormous — nearly 7,700% relative to estimated short interest — meaning there are hundreds of millions of shares available in the lending pool against fewer than 12 million shorted. The borrow market is about as unconstrained as it gets; short sellers face no friction in either direction.
Options traders have turned notably more optimistic over the past four weeks. The put/call ratio now sits at 0.63, well below its 20-day average of 0.71 and close to its lowest reading of the past year at 0.42. As recently as May 1, the ratio touched 0.93 — the highest of the past year — driven by heavy put demand around earnings. That hedging overhang has unwound steadily since, with calls gaining the upper hand. The shift is consistent with a market that already took its bearish position on April 22 and has been gradually rebuilding a more constructive stance.
The bull case rests on the structural story: Singapore's Marina Bay Sands generating record-level EBITDA, Macau exposure benefiting from a recovering mass market, and a balance sheet described as having ample liquidity for expansion. The bear case is arguably more specific — LVS generates a disproportionate share of its earnings from MBS, making it effectively a Singapore single-property story with Macau optionality on the side, and the current mid-teens EV/EBITDA multiple on that asset may already price in much of the upside. The company's EV/EBITDA runs at roughly 8x on a trailing basis, while the P/E reads around 14x — neither stretched nor cheap for an integrated resort operator with this geographic concentration. Factor scores reflect the tension: EPS surprise ranks at the 74th percentile and 90-day EPS momentum at the 72nd, suggesting the fundamental delivery has been decent; the 12-month forward EPS growth score sits at just 26, implying the market does not expect material acceleration from here.
Ownership concentration is a structural feature worth noting. The Adelson family — through the Sheldon G Adelson Family Trust and Miriam Adelson — controls roughly 51% of the register between them, a figure that has not changed in recent filings. D.E. Shaw built a notable new position of 3.56 million shares in Q1, while Arrowstreet added nearly 397,000. On the insider side, both a director and the President/CEO logged sales in late April and March respectively, at prices in the mid-$50s — above where the stock trades now.
Earnings are next due on July 22. The most recent print on April 22 produced a 9.7% single-session drop, followed by a further 6.6% over the ensuing week. The May 14 release — likely a smaller event — resulted in only a fractional day-one move. Those two reactions frame how sensitive LVS can be when guidance disappoints relative to a lofty target: close peer WYNN rose 2.5% on the week while LVS dipped 0.3%, underscoring that the relative underperformance has been specific rather than sector-wide. The question heading into July will be whether Singapore EBITDA momentum and Macau recovery commentary can close, or at least narrow, the persistent gap between where the Street values the business and where the market is willing to own it.
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