SJM delivered its June 2 earnings print — which has now passed — and heads into the following week with short sellers retreating but the Street still reaching for its red pen.
The most notable post-earnings shift is in short positioning. Short interest dropped 7% over the past week to roughly 4.4% of the free float, continuing a decline that began in mid-May when it peaked near 5.6%. Over the past month, shorts have unwound more than 8% of their position. That retreat is consistent with a print that didn't deliver the nasty surprise bears were pricing in: the prior earnings note here flagged heavy analyst skepticism ahead of June 2, and the stock has since edged up 3.6% over the past month, now trading at $100.47. The borrow market corroborates the exit — availability is extraordinarily loose at nearly 5,900% of short interest, meaning there are far more shares available to lend than are currently being borrowed. Cost to borrow has ticked up about 60% week-on-week to 0.51%, but in absolute terms that remains negligible. There is no squeeze pressure here.
Options positioning is mildly more cautious than usual, but not dramatically so. The put/call ratio is running at 0.38, roughly 0.7 standard deviations above its 20-day average of 0.35. That's a modest uptick in defensive hedging — notable mainly because the PCR had been drifting lower through most of May before nudging back up this week. With the 52-week high at 1.07, the current reading is a long way from reflecting real fear. Options traders appear to be keeping light hedges on rather than expressing strong directional conviction either way.
The analyst community is less sanguine. Even as the stock absorbed earnings, target cuts continued. UBS — a current-week action — lowered its target from $132 to $121 on Tuesday while keeping a Buy rating. That follows JP Morgan's trim from $130 to $120 two weeks ago and Evercore's fresh Outperform initiation at $117 in mid-May. The pattern across the past six weeks is consistent: bulls are trimming their ambition without abandoning the thesis, while the neutral camp — Morgan Stanley at $104, Barclays at $103, Stifel at $100 — has targets sitting almost exactly at the current price. The mean target of $115.35 implies about 15% upside from here, a wider cushion than the $103 price that prevailed before June 2's print, but still built on the back of a cohort of steadily declining targets. Evercore's Outperform initiation at $117 is the cleanest fresh signal, arriving without the legacy anchor of a prior — and higher — target.
The bull and bear debate remains anchored to coffee, as it was before the print. Bulls highlight robust free cash flow guidance of $875 million for FY26 and the expected pricing benefit from roughly 20% U.S. coffee price increases feeding into 3.5–5.5% comparable sales growth. The bear case centres on EPS compression: FY26 guidance points to an 11% decline in EPS, driven by volume elasticity from those same coffee price hikes, tariff headwinds, and margin pressure in Sweet Baked Snacks. The EPS surprise factor score of just 3 out of 100 suggests the company has not been a consistent beat-and-raise name, but the 90-day EPS momentum score of 85 indicates that forward estimates have been revised meaningfully higher in recent months — a partial redemption of the growth narrative. The dividend score of 95 keeps income-oriented holders firmly anchored.
Among peers, CAG slid 2.2% on the week and KHC dropped 2.2% alongside it — both underperforming SJM's modest 1.8% weekly decline. CPB was the standout in the group, gaining 4.3% over the same period. HRL surged nearly 12% on the week, though that move reflects company-specific newsflow rather than a sector read. SJM's relative stability in a weak packaged-foods tape, combined with the short unwind, suggests the earnings print resolved more uncertainty than it created.
The next scheduled event is June 9. With shorts retreating, targets still clustered well above the current price, and options relatively calm, what matters most heading into that date is whether management's FY26 EPS trajectory holds — particularly any update on coffee volume elasticity data as the pricing cycle matures.
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