WING delivered a sharp 11% weekly bounce to $140.63, yet short sellers are barely moving — and the Street just cut targets again.
The week's tension is straightforward: a double-digit price recovery from a brutal month-long slide of 26%, but almost no corresponding retreat from shorts. Short interest holds at 12.6% of free float — a genuinely elevated reading for a restaurant franchisor. Over the past week it barely shifted, down just 0.4%. That near-stasis tells you this rebound has not yet convinced the bears to cover. Positioning looks defiant rather than rattled.
The options market adds a cautious overlay. The put/call ratio has climbed to 1.19, running almost 1.8 standard deviations above its 20-day average of 1.07. That is not a panic reading, but it is the most defensive options posture WING has shown in the recent window, and it sits well above where the ratio was in late April — around 0.92 — when the stock was still above $200. Borrow conditions, by contrast, are relaxed. Availability is ample at 366%, meaning there are roughly three and a half shares available to lend for every one already borrowed. Cost to borrow ticked down on the week to just 0.5%. There is no squeeze pressure here, and the loose borrow market gives shorts little incentive to rush for the exit.
On the Street, the dominant theme is broad target compression. Goldman Sachs — the most notable mover — downgraded WING from Buy to Neutral at the end of April, slashing its target from $290 to $190. That call has aged well given the stock's subsequent decline. TD Cowen trimmed its target further this week to $160, maintaining a Hold. Most other active analysts — Barclays, Guggenheim, RBC, Wells Fargo, Citigroup — kept positive ratings but took targets down sharply, in some cases by 25-30%. The mean consensus target now stands at $237, implying roughly 69% upside from current prices — but that figure largely reflects stale optimism embedded in targets that haven't fully caught down to the new price reality. The bull case rests on mid-teens global unit growth and a return to positive same-store sales; the bear case focuses on a -2.5% same-store sales projection for 2026, with Q1 tracking as weak as -6.5%. The EV/EBITDA multiple of 17x has crept up modestly over the past month as the price fell faster than earnings estimates compressed — an uncomfortable re-rating dynamic.
The ownership picture contains one detail worth watching. FMR (Fidelity) recently added over 1.86 million shares, making it the largest holder at 14% of shares outstanding. Darsana Capital added 250,000 shares as recently as early May, taking its stake to 5.5%. Those are meaningful accumulation moves happening alongside, not after, the stock's collapse from above $250. They represent conviction buyers absorbing the flush — though they sit against an insider backdrop that is entirely sell-side: every recent insider transaction on record is a sale or routine award-and-sell, with the CFO and CIO both trimming in March and May respectively.
The last earnings print on May 21 produced a 9.6% single-day gain — a sharp reversal from the prior quarter's 5.2% drop and its brutal five-day follow-through of -16%. With the next event not until July 29, the stock has roughly two months to find a base. Whether the current 12.6% short interest level gradually unwinds or continues to act as a ceiling on any recovery attempt is what defines the setup between now and that next catalyst.
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