Century Aluminum heads into its May 5 Q1 earnings report with a striking divergence: the stock is up 19% over the past month, yet insiders and its largest shareholder have spent March consistently selling into that rally.
The ownership story is the most notable angle this week. Glencore — Century's main shareholder at roughly 12% — sold 6.3 million shares on March 4 for approximately $327 million, trimming its stake materially after what had been an extended period of holding. That single transaction accounts for the bulk of the $358 million net sell figure recorded over the past 90 days. It wasn't an isolated signal: the CEO sold 150,000 shares in mid-March at $55.47, the Chief Commercial Officer sold shares worth over $1.1 million in late February, and an Executive VP offloaded 43,000 shares near the same time. The pattern is broad-based rather than noise from a single executive. None of these are forced sales under a pre-announced plan as far as the data shows, and the cluster across different seniority levels catches the eye.
Short interest has been quietly rebuilding in parallel. At 8.8% of the free float, it rose 7.3% in a single week — from around 7.6 million to 8.2 million shares short. That's the highest it has been since at least mid-March. The borrowing market remains easy for new shorts: availability is loose, cost to borrow is just 0.66% (albeit up 78% from last week, the highest in the recent series, though still at a modest absolute level). With days to cover under one day, there is no structural squeeze pressure. The ORTEX short score is a neutral 47, squarely mid-range, and availability is well off the 52-week tightness level — the lending market is not signalling stress.
Options positioning tells a different, more bullish story, which is where the real tension sits. The put/call ratio at 0.34 is near its 52-week low and running well below its 20-day average of 0.50 — almost 1.3 standard deviations below, in fact. That shift happened abruptly around April 20, when the PCR dropped from above 0.58 to the current low-0.34 range in a single move and has held there. Options traders are positioned for a continued rally rather than protection into the print.
The Street broadly agrees with that optimism. Wells Fargo raised its target from $69 to $77 on April 16 while keeping an Overweight. B. Riley pushed its target to $86 earlier in the month. At $59.31, the mean analyst target of $79 implies roughly 29% upside. Earnings momentum has been strong — the 12-month forward EPS estimate ranks in the 92nd percentile for 90-day momentum, and in the 98th percentile for year-over-year forward EPS growth. Valuation remains undemanding: the PE is 5.7x and EV/EBITDA is 5.0x, though the EV/EBITDA multiple has compressed nearly 0.7 turns over the past month as the stock rallied. The most direct peer, Alcoa, fell 6.2% on the day and 5.9% over the week — suggesting aluminium sector headwinds haven't spared the group.
The last earnings print, in February, produced a modest positive surprise of around +4.8% on the day. The question heading into May 5 is whether a 19% one-month price move has already pulled forward that kind of reaction — and whether the concentrated insider selling and short rebuilding signals that those closest to the company see the current price as fair value.
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