Four Corners Property Trust emerges from its June 4 earnings print with short sellers pulling back and the borrow market more relaxed than it has been all year.
The most notable shift since the pre-earnings note is in short interest itself. Bears have been unwinding: SI dropped nearly 5% on the week to 3.9% of the free float, reversing a build that had been running since early May. The month-on-month figure still shows an 8% rise, but the direction of travel over the past five sessions is clearly the other way. The stock reacted mildly positively to the print — up 2.4% on the day — consistent with the pattern from prior quarters, where one-day moves have been contained between flat and low single digits. Borrow conditions are as loose as they come. Availability has surged to 5,598% of short interest — meaning there are roughly 56 shares available to borrow for every one already short, a level well above even the recent 52-week floor of 348%. Cost to borrow has eased to 0.39%, down from a high near 1.0% in late April. There is no lending market pressure amplifying the short side.
Options positioning tells a modestly more cautious story, though it is far from alarmed. The put/call ratio moved up to 0.12 on Friday — still very low in absolute terms, but about 1.8 standard deviations above its 20-day average. That is the highest defensive lean in recent weeks, even as the absolute ratio remains near the bottom of its 52-week range (0.06–1.57). The shift is worth noting but does not constitute a meaningful hedge signal — options volumes on FCPT are thin, and the 52-week high PCR of 1.57 is a very different animal from the current reading.
The Street remains broadly neutral, though there has been a modest drift upward in targets. Wells Fargo raised its target to $26 this week while keeping its Equal-Weight rating, the most recent move in a set of actions that also includes Barclays lifting to $30 and BMO Capital initiating at Market Perform with a $27 target in April. The mean price target of $28.22 implies about 14% upside from Friday's $24.70 close — respectable for a flat-rated REIT, but the clustering of neutral ratings signals conviction is limited. The EV/EBITDA multiple has eased roughly 0.4 turns over the past month to 14.6x, while the P/E has compressed by about a point to 19.9x. Neither move is dramatic. The dividend score ranks in the 96th percentile — the yield is a clear reason to hold — while EPS momentum scores (20th percentile at 30 days, 16th at 90 days) flag that forward earnings revisions have been heading the wrong way.
The CEO buying story from the pre-earnings note remains intact. Bill Lenehan added to his position in May at around $25.23, the fourth open-market purchase since February. Net insider activity over 90 days is a positive $733K, entirely driven by his discretionary buys against low-significance January sales by the CFO and Chief Accounting Officer. The pattern is unchanged — the CEO is still adding at current prices, even as shorts trim. Among peers, SAFE is the standout performer this week, up 3.4%, while VICI and GLPI are roughly flat to slightly positive. FCPT's modest 0.8% weekly decline makes it a mild laggard relative to the group, though the gap is narrow.
The next earnings event is pencilled in for July 29. Between now and then, the focus shifts to whether the short interest build that accumulated through May continues to unwind, and whether the CEO buying — now crossing $550,000 in open-market purchases — attracts any broader institutional follow-through from the 246 holders currently on the register.
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