Capital has begun rotating toward names where the sell-side's fair value still sits meaningfully above spot pricing, a signal often dismissed until sentiment snaps back. This week's screen surfaced five tickers with the widest gap between market price and analyst targets — a setup worth quantifying rather than hand-waving. Rather than relying on scattered research notes, we use FMP's Price Target Summary Bulk API to pull a consolidated view of target dispersion, then layer it into a repeatable scan workflow.

Five Names with the Widest Consensus Gaps

1) Brown & Brown, Inc. (NYSE: BRO)

Current Price: $87.91
Average Target (Last Quarter): $120.00
Upside Potential: +36.5%

BRO shows the widest gap in this cohort, and the dispersion suggests the market is valuing it as a steady compounder while analysts are pricing in an acceleration from consolidation gains. The firm's acquisition cadence continues to build scale in niche insurance segments where pricing power is structurally higher, but the market is yet to fully reflect that shift in mix.

Organic growth alone won't close this spread — the upside case hinges on the quality of incremental margins from acquired books. If management continues to show discipline in integrating deals and capturing cross-sell leverage, the current multiple looks conservative. Watch for commentary around integration efficiency rather than just deal volume — that's where rerating pressure will come from.

2) Devon Energy Corporation (NYSE: DVN)

Current Price: $31.74
Average Target (Last Quarter): $42.80
Upside Potential: +34.8%

Devon's setup reflects the market's hesitation to reward oil names without clear long-term reinvestment signals. Yet recent production efficiency and disciplined capital return actions indicate a shift toward a cleaner cash-yield profile rather than boom-bust drilling cycles. With capex coming in below midpoint last quarter, the market may be underestimating Devon's ability to generate sustained free cash flow at current strip levels.

To validate the upside, focus on whether Devon maintains output without cost inflation and continues returning capital rather than leaning into volume expansion. If the company resists chasing short-term production spikes, the current discount could compress quickly — especially if crude prices remain rangebound rather than collapsing.

3) Expand Energy Corp (NASDAQ: EXE)

Current Price: $100.78
Average Target (Last Quarter): $135.50
Upside Potential: +34.5%

A valuation gap of this size in an energy producer often signals the market is underwriting a more conservative commodity strip than analysts. If crude stabilizes or differentials tighten, price-to-cash-flow compression could reverse quickly. The key tension here is whether EXE maintains capital discipline through its next capex cycle or reverts to growth-at-all-costs, which would dilute the upside implied in the current target spread.

Investors should monitor updates around realized pricing and unit cost guidance — if operating costs per barrel trend lower while pricing holds, sentiment can shift abruptly. The market is currently discounting consistency; any evidence of stable free cash flow allocation rather than opportunistic volume chasing could close this gap faster than expected.

4) Globe Life Inc. (NYSE: GL)

Current Price: $134.78
Average Target (Last Quarter): $172.50
Upside Potential: +28.0%

A near-30% spread in a regulated insurance name is notable, especially after credit upgrades and fading controversy risk. The recent stabilization in credit outlook suggests the market may have over-penalized the stock during prior sentiment shocks. With that overhang reduced, the discount now reflects skepticism around organic policy growth rather than balance sheet risk.

What matters from here is whether underwriting trends stay defensible and capital returns remain predictable. The stock has started to trade more in line with stable cash generators rather than litigation-risk names — if that recalibration continues, consensus targets may quickly come back into focus as a realistic rather than optimistic anchor.

5) The Walt Disney Company (NYSE: DIS)

Current Price: $110.67
Average Target (Last Quarter): $140.00
Upside Potential: +26.5%

Disney's upside spread appears tied less to traditional media headwinds and more to how cleanly it transitions into a unified streaming and live-events ecosystem. As it folds premium sports and live content deeper into its subscription stack, the debate shifts from “sub growth” to “engagement monetization” — a different multiple entirely. The upcoming pricing resets will serve as a litmus test for how much elasticity remains in the brand.

Theme parks continue to act as a stabilizer, but the real inflection point lies in whether Disney can demonstrate margin improvement in direct-to-consumer — not just top-line subscriber gains. If cost discipline holds while high-value live content drives bundle stickiness, the current discount to target could narrow quickly without requiring a full sector rerating.

Reading the Signal Behind the Spread

Across the five names screened, the common thread isn't just that targets sit 25-35% above market — it's that each case reflects a different reason why the market is refusing to meet the analysts' fair-value line. Some discounts stem from execution skepticism (Disney, Devon), others from residual reputational drag (Globe Life), and in energy names like EXE and DVN, the market is pricing the cycle while analysts are pricing normalized cash generation. That distinction — sentiment vs. normalized economics — is where target gap analysis becomes useful rather than superficial.

A useful framing on this comes from FMP's breakdown of how different target benchmarks should be interpreted when assessing upside potential, especially when deciding whether last-quarter consensus or longer-term averages should anchor fair value.

To separate conviction setups from noise, pair consensus targets with fundamentals: cash flow strength and capital discipline through Financial Statements APIs. Cross-check with upcoming earnings dates and recent news flow using tools like the Earnings Calendar API or Search Stock News API, not to confirm the gap but to judge whether there's a plausible trigger for it to narrow.

Viewed this way, price-target spreads become less of a ranking exercise and more of a timing tool — highlighting where sentiment may be lagging fundamentals. That type of monitoring only holds its edge when the underlying price, target, and financial data are pulled from a consistent source such as FMP, where those inputs align under a single structure.

Automating Target Gap Analysis with the FMP API

To replicate this screen systematically instead of pulling figures by hand, you can run a straightforward workflow using two core FMP endpoints:

Step 1: Pull Analyst Price Targets

Start by querying the Price Target Summary Bulk API, which returns aggregated analyst target data across symbols in one call.

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"

}

]

From that response, lastQuarterAvgPriceTarget is the key field — it reflects the most recent sentiment and should anchor your fair-value comparison.

Step 2: Retrieve Current Pricing

Next, call the Company Profile Data API for each ticker to grab the current trading price.
https://financialmodelingprep.com/stable/profile/AAPL?apikey=YOUR_API_KEY

Step 3: Calculate Upside Potential

Apply a simple formula:

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

This normalizes the gap across names and allows ranking.

Step 4: Screen for High-Opportunity Stocks

Once the calculations are in place, flag tickers where upside exceeds a threshold — for example, 30% — and cross-reference with analyst count or coverage depth to avoid outliers skewed by thin estimates. Adding context from earnings timing or recent news helps determine whether the gap is actionable or just noise waiting for a catalyst.

From Desk-Level Insight to Team-Wide Signal Layer

A single analyst running this scan manually can surface interesting names — but the real leverage comes when the logic is institutionalized. When the same target-gap workflow is wired into a shared dashboard, price-to-consensus dislocations become part of the research fabric rather than a one-off discovery. At that point, analysts stop working in silos and start operating off a common signal layer.

Standardizing the inputs — coverage thresholds, update cadence, treatment of stale targets — turns an ad hoc screen into a governed process that PMs, risk, and sector teams can all reference without revalidating assumptions each time. This is where internal data champions matter: once a desk proves the signal's utility, codifying it into a centralized research layer prevents fragmentation and version drift.

For firms operating at scale, FMP's Enterprise plan provides the structure needed to maintain audit trails, apply consistent rules across teams, and ensure everyone is pulling from the same live dataset. With that in place, consensus shifts stop being reactive news and start functioning as a tracked signal tied directly into decision-making workflows.

Turning Target Gaps into Timing Signals

When target spreads are monitored alongside live pricing pulled through the FMP's Price Target Summary Bulk API and Company Profile Data API, they shift from static estimates to an active signal. The real value emerges not in spotting the gap, but in watching how it closes — and what catalyst triggers the move.

If you enjoyed this analysis, you'll also want to read: 5 Companies with Notable Insider Trades — and How to Track Them with the FMP API.