MDT enters its June 3 fiscal fourth-quarter earnings report having shed nearly 10% over the past month, closing at $73.81 on Friday — a painful gap below an analyst consensus price target of $106.56 that underscores how much ground the stock has to recover.
The most telling signal heading into the print is the near-uniform direction of analyst revisions. Across April, virtually every firm that updated its view on Medtronic trimmed its target — UBS cut to $90 from $104, Truist to $95 from $103, Citi to $110 from $117, and Piper Sandler to $91 from $105. The lone outlier was Barclays, which nudged its target up fractionally to $120 while keeping an Overweight rating. The direction of travel is cautious: the Street still holds a buy-tilted consensus and sees roughly 44% upside to current prices, but analysts have been systematically marking down their assumptions rather than leaning in. The consensus itself, at $106.56, now sits well above the stock — a gap that historically signals either deep undervaluation or a sustained re-rating lower in target prices still in progress.
The bull case rests on what a recent ORTEX note flagged as stronger-than-expected Q3 results and raised full-year guidance. EPS momentum ranks in the 91st percentile on a 30-day basis and 77th on a 90-day basis — meaning the company has been delivering positive estimate revisions at a pace that outpaces most of the market. Forward EPS growth on a year-over-year basis ranks in the 84th percentile. The bear case is more structural: analysts flagging market-share risk from competitors, underwhelming new-product revenue, and currency headwinds that have pressured reported numbers. The bear scenario cited in pre-print analysis points to a growth slowdown below 5% corresponding to around $76 per share in fair-value terms — uncomfortably close to where the stock is trading right now.
Short interest is not a meaningful part of this story. At just 1.2% of the free float, bearish positioning through the borrow market is negligible. Availability is effectively unlimited — the lending pool carries more than 1.2 billion shares available to borrow, dwarfing the shares actually shorted. Cost to borrow has fallen sharply, dropping more than 50% over the past month to just 0.20%. There is no squeeze pressure, no crowded short thesis. The options market tells a similarly calm story: the put/call ratio of 0.53 is barely above its 20-day average of 0.52, with a z-score of just 0.44 — options traders are not paying up for protection ahead of the release. Peers are moving in the same direction, with SYK, GMED, and STE each down 2-3% on the week, suggesting the weakness in MDT reflects broader medtech sector pressure rather than stock-specific alarm.
The June 3 print will test whether Medtronic's improving earnings momentum can hold up against persistent concerns about top-line growth and the widening gap between where the stock trades and where the Street thinks it should be valued.
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