SLB heads into its June 17 earnings print with short sellers backing away at pace — yet the CEO has been selling stock in the same window.
The short-side unwind is the most quantifiable story right now. Short interest has dropped 21.6% over the past month to 3.57% of the free float — about 53.3 million shares, the lowest level in the 30-day dataset. The decline has accelerated this week, with a 7.7% fall in a single session on June 9. That is a material change of direction from late April and early May, when shorts held close to 68 million shares. The borrow market echoes the same message: availability is exceptionally loose at 1,236%, well above the 52-week floor of 916%, meaning new short exposure remains easy to establish for anyone wanting it. Cost to borrow is barely above zero at 0.50%, up just 6% on the week — no sign of a squeeze in either direction.
Options positioning reinforces the picture of a market not particularly charged ahead of earnings. The put/call ratio has eased to 0.68, roughly in line with its 20-day average of 0.69 and sitting near the middle of its 52-week range (low: 0.42, high: 0.78). Notably, the ratio was at the 52-week high of 0.78 on June 8 — one session earlier — and has since dropped sharply, suggesting any short-dated hedging demand quickly faded. The ORTEX short score has drifted lower this week to 38.2, down from 40.9 on June 3, placing SLB in the 34th percentile of its universe on short positioning pressure — not a stock the bears are crowding into.
The Street is constructive but not unanimous on the pace of recovery. A cluster of upgrades in late April and early May — from JPMorgan, UBS, Citi, Barclays, TD Cowen, and Bernstein — pushed price targets up sharply following the Q1 beat, with most targets landing in the $61–$71 range. Evercore ISI trimmed its target just today to $63 from $64 while holding its Outperform rating — a marginal move, not a change of conviction. The mean target of $62.36 implies roughly 12% upside from the current $55.85. EV/EBITDA runs at 10.7x, down slightly over the month. The dividend factor score ranks in the 93rd percentile of the universe — an unusual bright spot in a sector that typically rewards growth over yield. The bull case rests on digital revenue momentum (roughly $3 billion in digital-related sales) and data centre exposure as a longer-cycle growth driver. Bears point to rising OPEC+ production and tariff headwinds weighing on upstream spending, with management's 25% EBITDA margin target looking harder to hit in the current macro environment.
The insider picture cuts against the short-covering narrative. CEO Olivier Le Peuch sold 25,000 shares on May 27 at $56.99, for a gross $1.4 million — his third sale of 25,000 shares since late March, following disposals in April and March at progressively lower prices. Executive Vice President Steve Gassen sold a combined $3 million in two tranches on May 1. Net insider activity over the past 90 days runs to roughly $7.9 million in net sales. None of these are distress signals — they look more like programmatic selling — but the pattern means no executive has been a buyer into the recent rally.
Peers moved in the same direction this week. WFRD fell 2.4%, HAL slipped 1.3%, and BKR dropped 2.0%, so SLB's 1.3% weekly dip is broadly in line with the group rather than a stock-specific story. XPRO was the outlier, gaining 5.7% on the week.
The June 17 print is the next focal point. The last two quarterly releases produced modest positive first-day reactions of around 0.9% and a stronger five-day move — +4.0% and +8.5% respectively. The combination of rapidly retreating short interest and a loosely hedged options market suggests the setup is less combative than it was a month ago, leaving the result of the earnings call — and any updated guidance on the OPEC+ and tariff backdrop — as the cleanest near-term catalyst to watch.
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