NEW YORK, March 26, 2026, 07:15 EDT
Clear Secure hovered just off its 52-week high Thursday, drawing a fresh wave of investor attention—even as new filings flagged by MarketBeat revealed Nordea Investment Management trimmed its position late last year. Shares ended Wednesday at $54.48, a gain of 1.77% for the session and now up 55.3% for 2026. Earlier in the week, the stock topped out at $56.30, its best mark in a year.
Timing is key here: snarled airport lines have become a catalyst for Clear’s business. The $209-a-year CLEAR Plus program leans on fingerprints or eye scans to push users past the ID check—available now in roughly 60 airports. Reuters put out numbers Wednesday showing over 480 TSA officers have quit since the partial U.S. government shutdown kicked off in mid-February, and some passengers have faced security waits topping four hours.
App usage numbers are jumping. According to Business Insider, which referenced Appfigures Intelligence, the CLEAR app picked up around 23,200 downloads on March 22—that’s a 630% spike compared to its average daily figure in January and February. Through March 23, CLEAR saw about 230,000 installs for the month. “Momentum had built more gradually, and is still accelerating,” said Randy Nelson, senior market insights analyst at Appfigures. Business Insider
Momentum traders are picking up on it as well. MT Newswires flagged Clear Secure in a WallStreetBets-flavored roundup before the U.S. market opened Tuesday. The following day, they rolled out another piece—this one highlighting premarket gains as more travelers downloaded the app to skip long TSA lines.
Nordea’s adjustment actually predates the recent surge in the stock. According to its Form 13F for the period ending Dec. 31—filed Jan. 8—the bank reported holding 319,634 Clear Class A shares, valued at roughly $11.28 million. MarketBeat pegged that as a 13% reduction from the previous quarter. Since the disclosure reflects year-end positions, the share cut likely happened ahead of most of March’s big move.
Behind the recent lift from travel, Clear’s numbers have gotten sturdier. Fourth-quarter revenue jumped 16.7% to $240.8 million, and total bookings—tracking signed sales, even those not yet recognized as revenue—rose 25.4% to $287.1 million. The company wrapped up 2025 counting 38 million members and 7.6 million active CLEAR+ subscriptions. There’s also a fresh multi-year partnership renewal with American Express, plus a record-setting quarter for its business-to-business identity platform, CLEAR1.
Management keeps pushing to broaden the company’s pitch beyond the airport. On March 2, Chief Executive Caryn Seidman Becker rolled out a revamped app and called travel “hard and getting harder,” highlighting features like “Know When to Leave,” Uber integration, and a concierge tool built right in. A few weeks before, Becker told investors the firm had reached “an inflection point” with travel and enterprise demand both gaining momentum. MarketScreener
The tone has only fueled bullish talk. On Wednesday, Seeking Alpha’s Sean Daly called Clear’s latest moves another “inflection point,” pointing to growing enterprise momentum and tech upgrades pushing beyond its core airport business. Seeking Alpha
The stock doesn’t look like a bargain at this point. MarketScreener shows analysts’ average target at $50.88—below where shares finished Wednesday, at $54.48. On top of that, Clear flagged the risk from unpredictable airport shifts after CLEAR lanes were halted at Houston’s Bush airport Monday. Should TSA wait times drop off soon, much of the recent surge in app downloads could fizzle before becoming long-term subscriptions.
But airport headaches aren’t the only thing on investors’ minds. Clear bumped up its quarterly dividend by 20% to $0.15 a share, handed out an additional $0.20 special dividend on March 24, and boosted its buyback authorization by $125 million. That move pushes the remaining repurchase firepower to roughly $250.3 million.
