Constellation and PepsiCo trade at 52-week lows before earnings; options price 5.5% and 3.7% moves
Constellation Brands reports Tuesday, Applied Digital Wednesday and PepsiCo Thursday. PepsiCo is priced at its four-report average, Constellation above it, and Applied Digital at about one and a half times its own.
Three large reports land in the next three trading days, and two of the three stocks head into them at or just under their 52-week lows. At 11:20 a.m. Monday, Nasdaq showed Constellation Brands at $110.95, below the $111.54 low in its 52-week range, and PepsiCo at $124.63, just under its $125.16 low. Nasdaq's summary pages may lag the live price, so treat the "new low" reading as intraday.
How the number is built
Each figure is an at-the-money straddle: the price of one call plus one put at the strike closest to the share price, in the first weekly expiry after the report, here Friday, October 9. It measures the size of move the options market is paying for in either direction. It is not a forecast or a target. Prices are from the Robinhood feed collected at 7:04 a.m. Eastern Monday, which carries Friday's closing prices; past moves run from the close before each report to the close after it.
The three reports
| Company | Reports | Feed price | Implied move | Avg. of last 4 moves | IV rank (1 yr) | Price at 11:20 a.m. Mon |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Constellation Brands (STZ) | Tue Oct 6, after close | $112.87 | $6.22 (5.5%) | 4.1% | 0.00 | $110.95 (-1.7%) |
| Applied Digital (APLD) | Wed Oct 7, after close | $25.60 | $3.35 (13.1%) | 8.3% | 1.00 | $24.35 (-4.1%) |
| PepsiCo (PEP) | Thu Oct 8, before open | $125.98 | $4.71 (3.7%) | 3.7% | 0.00 | $124.63 (-1.0%) |
All three dates are marked confirmed in the feed. The straddles for all three use the October 9 expiry, so each also carries up to three days of ordinary trading after the report.
Constellation Brands: cheaper than Friday, still above its history
Constellation's straddle at the $113 strike costs $6.22, a range of roughly $106.65 to $119.09 from the feed price. Our Friday story had it at $6.55, or 5.8%, so the priced move has come in a little even as the stock slipped. It is still above the 4.1% average of the last four reports, which moved the stock 1.0%, 5.3%, 8.5% and negative 1.6%. The company beat the EPS estimate in all four. The estimate for this quarter in the feed is $3.57 a share.
The oddity is the implied volatility rank of 0.00: options are priced at the cheapest level of their past year (an implied volatility of about 48%) while the shares sit at a year low. That says the market is not paying up for fear here. It says nothing about the direction of the move.
Applied Digital: the price of the move went up
On Friday the straddle was $3.13, or 12.7%. In Monday's feed it is $3.35, or 13.1%, at the $25.50 strike, with implied volatility of about 113%, up from 84% in Friday's feed. Its rank stays at the top of its one-year range. The range implied from the feed price is roughly $22.25 to $28.95.
The stock was down $1.035, or 4.1%, at 11:20 a.m. Monday, against a 52-week range of $19.01 to $50.73. Over its last four reports it moved 16.1%, 8.1%, negative 8.0% and 0.9%, an average of 8.3%, and it beat the EPS estimate each time. Only one of the four moves was larger than the 13.1% now priced. The estimate for the quarter is a loss of 29 cents a share. Options are charging about one and a half times the typical reaction, and that gap widened over the weekend.
PepsiCo: priced exactly at its average
PepsiCo is the cleanest match of the three. The straddle at the $126 strike is $4.71, or 3.7%, which brackets roughly $121.27 to $130.69 from the feed price. The average of its last four reports is also 3.7%: moves of 4.2%, 4.9%, 2.3% and negative 3.3%. Implied volatility is about 32%, rank 0.00. The estimate in the feed is $2.30 a share; PepsiCo beat in three of the last four reports and missed once, by a cent.
What makes this report matter more than its price move is the setup. PepsiCo shares have fallen to roughly the bottom of their year, and in September Bloomberg News reported, via Investing.com, that it plans to raise prices on some chips and sodas after earlier cuts. Our earlier story traced that to PepsiCo's own 10-Q: North American snack revenue fell 2% while volume stayed flat. A market-implied move this close to the average suggests options traders are not treating this as an unusual report. The stock's drift to a year low is the unusual part.
Left out
Lamb Weston, RPM, Penguin Solutions, Neogen and Worthington Steel report Tuesday, and Levi Strauss on Wednesday. Their nearest usable options expire October 16, about nine to ten days after the reports, so their straddles blend the earnings reaction with more than a week of ordinary trading and are not comparable with the table above.
Filings are on SEC EDGAR: Constellation Brands, Applied Digital and PepsiCo.
Sources: implied volatility, straddle prices, earnings dates, estimates and past earnings moves via Robinhood; live quotes and 52-week ranges via Nasdaq; Investing.com; filings via SEC EDGAR. Some data may be delayed. This is market information, not investment advice.
Want your business to be the answer?
Get a full package of articles about your business, built so customers, Google and AI assistants can find you.