I don't think so, other companies that have the Alien franchise licensing haven't been holding things back. This had a set date when it went up for order (in agreement with the licenser) and it's HOT TOYS that's pushing it back.
Hot Toys never gets the criticism it deserves. People always want to suggest it's a faceless entity like contracts or licenesers that are the problem. I don't see why this can't be Hot Toys being Hot Toys and treating this figure (and line) like the low priority we all know Hot Toys thinks it is. Hold back the Hot Toys Prometheus figures for Covenant? WTF? Hot Toys announced that line 6 years ago with a bunch of "coming soon" teases and never made good on it. Not even a single preorder. Again, other companies had product ready to go for it and we saw multiple Engineers and such that were exclusive to Prometheus. There isn't even much hope of Hot Toys doing anything for Covenant.
Again, this is a Hot Toys problem exclusive to them, not Fox. How come Hot Toys is the only one having problems when NECA, Diamond Distributors, Funko and now even Eaglemoss are having no problems whatsoever getting Alien merchandise out there. ****ing Ripley? In the span it took Hot Toys to even announce Ripley, NECA have made 6, with a 7th on the way. All of them unique in some compacity. Those other companies aren't having problems either and have been readily producing merchandise well before Covenant was even a thing.
If she suddenly ships next month, it's a coincidence. And it's not like Hot Toys has anything planned for the actual Covenant film anyway. Something Fox would surely would want a company to promote via merchandise that Hot Toys hasn't even made a peep about. Hot Toys doesn't even share the new Alien Covenant trailers on their Facebook. They. Don't. Care. That sentiment trickles down to their figures like this. Look at their Facebook, it's all about the Disney brands like Marvel and Star Wars. Figures that only went up for preorder a few months ago are already getting released now while Ripley has been in development for years. Same with other crap they don't care about like older movie licenses.
If I were Fox, Studiocanal, Universal Studios, etc. I wouldn't let Hot Toys have any of my properties anymore. They don't do any of them justice.