SkyWest took the market by storm Friday, rocketing to $30.38 per share despite it now being above its mean target price of $21.25. This 4.3% movement implies there may not be much more room for upwards movement for the stock -- if its analysts are to be believed. They are giving the Airlines stock on average rating of hold, with target prices ranging from 18.0 to 24.0 dollars per share.
SkyWest's short interest can give us an idea of what future price movements the market expects from the stock. The short interest is the percentage of shares that are tied up in short positions, which will provide gains to the investor only if the stock price falls. The stock's short interest is 7.2% which seems to indicate a mixed sentiment on SKYW
When a stock is sold short, it means an investor has borrowed shares of the stock from their broker, and then sold them at the going market price. The investor hopes for the price to decline, so that they might buy those shares back at a lower price in the future. Once they do, they can return the borrowed shares to their broker, and keep the profit they made on the transaction.
One way to get an idea of the market sentiment on a stock is to check its rate of institutional ownership. In the case of SkyWest, institutional investors own 86.7% of the shares. This would indicate a positive sentiment towards the stock among institutions. What does this really tell us?
Institutional investors such as hedge funds, investment firms, and wealth managers devote significant resources to identifying good investments. If they have decided to invest in SKYW, it probably means they believe it is a solid investment choice. But it could also mean they are buying up shares in an effort to acquire the company or get seats on the board of directors. Also bear in mind that institutions are fallible (just maybe not quite as fallible as the average retail investor), so they may simply be wrong when they think they've found a good stock.
Overall, there is negative market sentiment on SkyWest because its an analyst belief that shares are overpriced, a hold rating, an average amount of shares sold short, and a significant number of institutional investors. Warren Buffett famously said that in the short term, markets are voting mechanisms, but in the long term, they are weighing mechanisms. This means that long term investors should be aware of a stock's fundamentals before committing.
Buffett was one of the fist investors to focus on free cash flow as a yardstick for a company's health. Here are SKYW's recent cash flows:
| Date Reported | Cash Flow from Operations ($ k) | Capital expenditures ($ k) | Free Cashflow ($ k) | YoY Growth (%) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022-12-31 | 480,376 | -682,591 | -202,215 | -234.44 |
| 2021-12-31 | 831,820 | -681,402 | 150,418 | -18.97 |
| 2020-12-31 | 633,563 | -447,921 | 185,642 | 2847.63 |
| 2019-12-31 | 721,030 | -714,732 | 6,298 | n/a |
