Fidelity National Financial heads into its June 10 earnings with options traders unusually bearish — the clearest pre-print signal in an otherwise quiet setup.
The put/call ratio has jumped to 3.34, more than two and a half standard deviations above its 20-day average of 2.09. That's the most defensive options posture FNF has seen in months, a sharp departure from a ratio that barely moved between 1.75 and 1.91 throughout May. The shift began abruptly in early June, rising from 1.92 on June 1 to 3.22 by June 4 — suggesting fresh put demand arrived specifically in the run-up to this print.
Short interest tells a quieter story. Bears have actually been covering. FNF's short interest dropped from roughly 8.4 million shares in early May to 7.7 million by June 4, pulling the SI % of free float down to 2.9% — a low reading for this stock. Borrow is nearly free at 0.34% annually, and availability is vast, with roughly 4,900% of shares available relative to what's currently borrowed. There's no structural squeeze pressure here. The stock is easy to short if conviction builds — which makes the put positioning feel more like event hedging than a sustained bearish thesis.
The past month has been rough for the stock. FNF fell 7.4% over May, though it clawed back 3% in the past session to $47.40. That recovery still leaves the stock nearly $15 below where analysts are targeting. The consensus mean price target sits at $62.20, implying roughly 31% upside — but analysts have been trimming, not lifting. Barclays cut its target twice in two months, most recently to $50 in mid-May, maintaining an Equal-Weight rating. Stephens lowered its target to $58 in the same week while keeping an Overweight. The direction of travel on the Street is cautiously lower, even among the bulls.
Revenue grew 16.7% year-over-year in the latest quarter to $3.21 billion, and the operating margin was solid at 19.3%. But net income came in at $243 million on $3.2 billion of revenue — a 7.6% net margin that leaves the stock trading at nearly 53x trailing earnings, a premium that requires the housing market and mortgage origination volumes to cooperate. The forward EPS growth outlook ranks in the 81st percentile of the universe, suggesting analysts still model meaningful improvement ahead. Past prints have not rewarded that optimism: FNF fell roughly 1.4–1.8% on the day and 6.8–7.2% over the following five sessions after its most recent earnings releases.
June 10's print will test whether Q2 title insurance volumes are recovering enough to justify the stock's valuation premium — and whether the options hedgers turned out to be early or right.
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