This week's screen surfaced five names where price is no longer waiting for consensus to catch up. Across industrials, tech, and consumer discretionary, the common thread is the same: market pricing has moved decisively ahead of published analyst targets, creating measurable gaps that tend to appear during periods of rotation and early sentiment shift rather than late-cycle euphoria.

The signal comes from a clean pull of consensus targets using the FMP's Price Target Summary Bulk API, paired against live market prices. In this piece, we break down what those gaps are telling us right now — and walk through the exact API-driven workflow used to surface them, step by step.

Five Stocks Showing Large Upside Skew

Burlington Stores Inc NYSE: BURL

Current Price: $266.09 • Consensus Target: $336.89 • Upside Potential: ≈ 26.6%

Burlington's target gap is one of the widest in this screen, with price at $266.09 compared to a $336.89 consensus target. The market's pricing suggests growing confidence in off-price retail as inventory normalization and consumer trade-down behavior continue to favor value-oriented formats. This repricing has occurred even as analyst targets remain anchored to longer-cycle retail assumptions.

What matters here is not headline sales growth but execution efficiency — inventory turns, shrink control, and margin discipline. These factors often influence price action well before targets are revised meaningfully. Segment-level income statements, same-store sales data, and inventory metrics would be the most relevant datasets to assess whether the observed skew reflects sustainable operating leverage rather than short-term multiple expansion.

Eaton Corporation PLC NYSE: ETN

Current Price: $331.98 • Consensus Target: $418 • Upside Potential: ≈ 26%

Eaton stands out as a classic example of price advancing faster than consensus during periods of industrial and infrastructure-linked rotation. At $331.98 versus a $418 consensus target, the gap reflects a market that has continued to reward exposure to electrification, grid modernization, and aerospace end-markets while analyst models appear slower to incorporate the persistence of that demand. The skew is notable not because targets are aggressive, but because price has already discounted a higher-quality earnings profile.

What makes the signal more durable is Eaton's margin structure and backlog visibility, both of which have supported steady upward revisions to cash flow expectations over time. Analysts tend to adjust targets incrementally as new quarters confirm execution, whereas price often reacts earlier to order strength and capital spending cycles. Monitoring income statement trends and segment-level operating margins would be the most direct way to evaluate whether the gap reflects temporary sentiment or sustained fundamentals.

Dell Technologies Inc NYSE: DELL

Current Price: $129.98 • Consensus Target: $161.75 • Upside Potential: ≈ 24.4%

Dell's gap reflects renewed attention to infrastructure demand and capital return rather than pure PC-cycle recovery. Trading at $129.98 against a $161.75 consensus target, the stock has moved ahead of analyst models as investors respond to cash flow strength, shareholder distributions, and exposure to enterprise and AI-related server buildouts.

The signal is notable because Dell's valuation has historically been constrained by cyclical concerns, yet price action suggests those risks are being reframed through balance sheet improvement and capital allocation discipline. Evaluating free cash flow trends, buyback activity, and analyst target dispersion would provide clarity on whether this gap represents a durable reassessment or a shorter-term sentiment adjustment.

International Flavors & Fragrances Inc NYSE: IFF

Current Price: $63.26 • Consensus Target: $76.67 • Upside Potential: ≈ 21.2%

IFF's target gap emerges from a different setup: stabilization rather than acceleration. With shares trading at $63.26 against a $76.67 consensus target, the skew reflects improving confidence that restructuring actions, asset rationalization, and debt reduction efforts are beginning to reset the company's financial profile.

The signal here is less about growth momentum and more about balance sheet and earnings quality normalization. Historically, these inflection points tend to show up first in equity pricing before being fully reflected in forward estimates. Tracking cash flow statements, leverage ratios, and insider transaction data would provide useful context on whether the current gap aligns with internal confidence and ongoing financial repair.

Gartner Inc NYSE: IT

Current Price: $233.89 • Consensus Target: $268 • Upside Potential: ≈ 14.6%

Gartner's smaller but persistent gap highlights how defensiveness and recurring-revenue visibility are being repriced in real time. At $233.89 versus a $268 consensus target, the market appears to be assigning value to the company's subscription-based research model and steady contract renewals, particularly as enterprise IT spending becomes more selective rather than broadly expansionary.

The relevance of this signal lies in how sentiment around technology has shifted from hardware cycles to advisory and services resilience. Analyst targets often lag these rotations because they rely on longer-term growth assumptions rather than near-term renewal data. Reviewing deferred revenue trends, contract value disclosures, and historical analyst revision patterns would help determine whether the gap is driven by structural stability or temporary risk aversion elsewhere in the sector.

Reading the Signal Beneath Market Dislocations

Viewed together, these five names highlight a familiar but often underappreciated dynamic: price is adjusting incrementally as new information is absorbed, while consensus targets recalibrate more slowly. The gaps are not concentrated in one sector or factor, but spread across different drivers — margins, balance sheets, recurring revenue, and capital discipline — suggesting selective repricing rather than crowded positioning.

Price-target gaps are most informative when they're interpreted in context. Comparing consensus targets with operating performance, cash flow trends, and estimate dispersion — similar to how single-stock price-target heatmaps are used to visualize analyst alignment and drift — helps distinguish sentiment noise from structurally improving fundamentals.

Within a unified data framework such as the one provided by FMP, those intersections become a way to track how markets are reprioritizing information, not to forecast outcomes, but to understand where adjustment is already underway.

Building a Repeatable Target-Gap Screen with FMP

At its core, a target-gap screen is about sequencing the data correctly and keeping the process repeatable. Once the order of operations is defined, the entire universe can be refreshed with a small set of FMP endpoints, eliminating the need for ticker-by-ticker handling. This is the basic structure most research teams use when building a scalable version of the screen. Before running anything, confirm that your API key is enabled.

Step 1: Pull Analyst Price Targets

Begin by pulling consensus price targets across the full ticker set. The Price Target Summary Bulk API is designed for this exact purpose, returning average targets and analyst participation counts in a single request rather than requiring individual symbol calls. This establishes the reference point for how the sell side is currently positioned.

Endpoint:
https://financialmodelingprep.com/stable/price-target-summary-bulk?apikey=YOUR_API_KEY

Sample Response:

[

{

"symbol": "AAPL",

"lastQuarterCount": "12",

"lastQuarterAvgPriceTarget": "228.15",

"lastYearAvgPriceTarget": "205.34"

}

]

Step 2: Pull Latest Market Prices

Next, pair those targets with the most recent trading price. That data sits in the Company Profile Data API, which includes the current quote used as the reference point for your gap calculation.
https://financialmodelingprep.com/stable/profile/AAPL?apikey=YOUR_API_KEY

Step 3: Derive the Target Gap

With both the current price and the consensus target available, calculate the percentage difference:

Upside % = (Price Target - Current Price) / Current Price × 100

Working in percentage terms standardizes the results so that high-priced and low-priced names can be compared on the same footing.

Step 4: Apply a Threshold Filter

The final pass is about selectivity. Most desks apply a minimum upside threshold — often around 20% — to separate routine dispersion from gaps that merit further analysis. Analyst coverage depth should be considered alongside the percentage itself, as targets supported by broader and more recent participation tend to carry more analytical weight than those built on limited or outdated inputs.

Scaling a Desk-Level Screen Into a Firmwide Signal

A target-gap screen proves its usefulness quickly at the individual level, but its real impact shows up once it becomes shared infrastructure rather than a personal tool. When definitions, thresholds, and refresh cadence are standardized across desks, the output stops being “one analyst's view” and starts functioning as a common signal — something research, portfolio teams, and risk can reference without debating methodology before debating conclusions.

That transition usually hinges on analysts taking on a broader role as internal owners of workflow design. Treating the screen as firm-level infrastructure means formalizing inputs, setting clear rules around estimate freshness and coverage depth, and locking in calculation logic so results are consistent regardless of who runs the pull. The payoff is practical: fewer bespoke spreadsheets circulating in parallel, fewer mismatched dashboards, and far less time reconciling why similar analyses produce different numbers.

At an institutional scale, any signal that informs discussion or decision-making needs to be both reproducible and reviewable. That requires a centralized data environment rather than a collection of local scripts and one-off queries. Housing workflows like this inside a shared system — such as an enterprise setup built on FMP's Enterprise plan — allows the logic to persist beyond individual desks, supports auditability, and creates a durable reference point for cross-team alignment. When that happens, the screen becomes part of the firm's research fabric, not just a useful idea that lives on one machine.

When the Market Reprices Before the Story Catches Up

When price starts adjusting before estimates follow, it often signals that the market is processing new information faster than the formal narrative can absorb it. Target gaps surfaced through tools like the FMP Price Target Summary Bulk API, help frame where that adjustment is already underway — not as a conclusion, but as an early reference point for how consensus may evolve. In environments like this, the signal isn't the gap itself, but the pace at which reality is being repriced.

If you enjoyed this analysis, you'll also want to read: Five Significant Valuation Disconnects Identified by the FMP API (Week of Dec 1-5)