Texas Instruments goes into Tuesday's Q2 print with a sharply divided analyst community, a cost-to-borrow spike that demands explanation, and a stock that has given back some of Monday's modest recovery after a brutal month.
The most striking data point heading into the release is borrowing costs. The cost to borrow has jumped to 2.61% — more than five times where it traded just two sessions ago at 0.47%. That is a single-week move of roughly 585%. It stands out because everything else in the lending market argues the opposite direction: availability remains essentially unconstrained, with over 906 million shares available to lend, and short interest has continued falling — down 18% over the past week to just 1.85% of the free float. The CTB spike looks like a narrow transactional anomaly rather than a signal of building bearish demand, but it is worth watching if it persists post-earnings. Options positioning remains biased toward calls. The put/call ratio of 0.71 is nearly two standard deviations below its 20-day average of 0.79, keeping it toward the more bullish end of its annual range.
The analyst debate has sharpened materially in the run-up. On the bullish side, Keybanc, TD Cowen, UBS, Stifel, and BofA have all raised targets in recent weeks — Keybanc lifting its Overweight target from $325 to $390 on July 14, and TD Cowen moving from $300 to $360 on July 13. The consensus mean target of $306 implies roughly 8% upside from current levels. Morgan Stanley is the loud dissenter: Joseph Moore reiterated Underweight yesterday, raising his target only to $230 — a 19% discount to where TXN actually trades. That gap is not a rounding error. Bears point to declining free cash flow, inventory accumulation, and compressed margins as evidence that the analog cycle recovery is slower than bulls admit. Bulls counter that industrial and automotive end markets are beginning to restock, and that TXN's capital expenditure cycle positions it for share gains when demand normalises.
JP Morgan Asset Management added 7.5 million shares in the most recent reporting period, making it one of the more meaningful institutional moves among the top holders. That kind of conviction from a major asset manager sits in contrast to the insider picture, which was exclusively selling through May — the CFO liquidated over $14 million of stock, though the trades were spread across multiple tranches and likely reflect scheduled plans rather than a negative view.
Tuesday's print will test whether the inventory restocking narrative bulls have been pricing in has actually begun to appear in the numbers — and whether management's guidance gives Morgan Stanley's bear case any ground to stand on.
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