TCOM heads into its June 24 earnings release with the lending market relaxed, options positioning neutral, and the real debate sitting firmly on the fundamental side of the ledger.
Short sellers are not pressing an aggressive thesis here. Shares borrowed have edged up roughly 1.6% over the past week to around 15.1 million, a modest move that leaves the borrow picture unremarkable. Availability is generous at 722% — more than seven shares remain lendable for every one already borrowed — and cost to borrow has actually eased 12% over the week to below 0.5%. That combination points to a borrow market with no squeeze pressure and plenty of room for incremental shorts if the print disappoints. Options pricing reinforces the calm setup: the put/call ratio of 0.85 is essentially flat against its 20-day average, with a z-score near zero. The stock itself closed at $46.42, up 2.9% on the day but still about 2% lower on the week.
The fundamental argument is where the tension lives. Bulls point to Trip.com's travel volumes, which remain genuinely impressive — accommodation reservations up 23% year-over-year and international travel sales up 30%, with outbound travel recovery tracking ahead of earlier projections. The EPS surprise factor score ranks in the 98th percentile of the ORTEX universe, a signal that the company has consistently beaten Street estimates. Bears focus on the margin story: domestic hotel pricing remains soft due to supply growth, and management has already guided gross margin down around 150 basis points to approximately 28%. The most recent analyst moves — both from February, from TD Cowen and Benchmark — involved target cuts to the $68–$72 range following a prior quarter's results, leaving price targets well above the current $46 share price. That gap reflects lingering uncertainty rather than clear directional conviction from the Street. The consensus view has been Bullish for some time, but analyst enthusiasm has cooled at the margin since the target reductions earlier this year.
One institutional detail worth noting: Capital Research, Trip.com's largest holder at roughly 7.6% of shares, added over 1 million shares in the most recent reported period. Davis Selected Advisers and Principal Global Investors also added meaningfully. The co-founder Jianzhang Liang trimmed his position by around 2.2 million shares as of March, though that is now a quarter old. Taken together, institutional flows lean toward accumulation rather than distribution — consistent with a stock where the bear case is margin compression rather than a broken business model.
Past prints offer limited reassurance for those hoping for a clean reaction: the last three earnings releases all produced negative one-day moves, averaging around 2%, with continued softness over the following week. Whether the June quarter's report can break that pattern — delivering margin stability alongside strong travel volume growth — is what Wednesday's release will ultimately test.
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