Abbott Laboratories enters the week with its options market sending the most bullish signal in twelve months — even as the stock drifts near its monthly lows and the broader medical-device peer group sells off hard.
The options story is the standout this week. The put/call ratio has fallen to 0.67, the lowest reading of the past 52 weeks — well below the 20-day average of 0.73 and nearly 1.4 standard deviations beneath it. That is not a defensive posture. It reflects call-side demand running unusually hot relative to puts, even with the stock down roughly 2.8% over the past month at $86.97. The contrast with where the PCR stood in late April — above 0.97 during peak post-earnings anxiety — is sharp. Options traders have decisively rotated away from hedging and toward positioning for recovery.
That bullish lean in options sits alongside a short book that remains modest but has been quietly rebuilding. Short interest has climbed about 13% over the past month to 1.36% of the free float — still a low absolute level, well below any threshold that signals crowded bearishness. The borrow market is entirely relaxed: availability is deep, with the lending pool vastly exceeding current short demand. Cost to borrow is a nominal 0.27%, though the week-on-week move in that figure looks dramatic due to a single day in late May when it briefly dipped to near zero; the underlying trend is unchanged. There is no squeeze dynamic here, no friction in the borrow market, and no sign that short sellers are pressing an aggressive thesis.
The Street remains firmly constructive, though targets have moved lower since the April 16 Q1 print. After Abbott fell nearly 5% on that day and almost 9% over the following week, analysts across Barclays, Piper Sandler, Oppenheimer, RBC, Benchmark, Evercore, Bank of America, and Stifel all kept positive ratings intact but trimmed targets — most into the $115–$130 range. The consensus lands at 17 buys and 6 holds with no sells. At $87, the stock trades at a meaningful discount to even the more conservative targets, a gap that partly explains why the options market has turned more optimistic. Valuation has compressed alongside the price: the P/E is around 15x and EV/EBITDA has eased to roughly 11.3x, both down over the past month. The dividend factor score ranks in the 98th percentile — a reminder that income buyers provide a structural floor.
Peer context sharpens the picture. SYK fell 6.3% on the week and PODD dropped 7.4%. COO lost 4.1%. Abbott's 0.3% weekly gain is, against that backdrop, quietly notable. The stock is not flying — but it is holding while correlated names are giving ground. That relative resilience echoes the prior note's observation about Abbott's diversified revenue base cushioning sector-specific pressure.
The insider buying flagged in the previous note — the CFO's $201,000 purchase and Director Starks' near-$1 million buy in late April — remains the most recent disclosed activity and has not been reversed or added to since. The 90-day net position is modestly positive. Nothing has changed in that signal; it continues to read as conviction at the post-earnings price, not opportunistic noise.
Q2 results are scheduled for July 15. Between now and then, the key watch is whether the PCR holds at its new lows or retraces — a reversal back above 0.73 would suggest the options-market optimism is fading — and whether short interest continues its slow grind higher or plateaus at the current low level.
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