Cohu, Inc. heads into its July 30 earnings report with short sellers visibly retreating — yet with 15.3% of the float still bet against it, the skeptics haven't left the room.
The most striking move of the past two weeks is how quickly bears have been covering. Short interest has dropped 7.2% over the week and 9% over the past month, pulling from roughly 7.97 million shares in late June down to 7.14 million by July 21. The direction of travel is clear: shorts that built positions through Q2 are unwinding into the pre-earnings print. At the same time, the stock has been behaving like one being squeezed — up 9.1% in a single session on July 21, though essentially flat on the week after earlier softness. Over the past month it's still down nearly 19%, so the one-day jump represents relief rather than a full reversal.
The lending market is loose, which means this isn't a mechanical short squeeze. Availability is running at 386%, up sharply from a 52-week low of 180% hit in late June — there is ample supply of shares to borrow for anyone who wants to build a fresh short position. Cost to borrow is effectively nothing at 0.44%, barely changed on the week. The short score has also eased, sliding from 66.5 on July 8 to 60.7 today, a signal that the composite pressure on the stock from the lending market has lessened in two weeks. Options traders are not adding defensiveness either: the put/call ratio sits at 0.30, barely above its 20-day average of 0.30, and well below the 52-week high of 1.04. Taken together, positioning looks cautious but not crowded — shorts are unwinding into earnings, while the borrow market leaves plenty of room for them to rebuild.
The Street is firmly on the other side of those remaining shorts. Analyst activity has been almost uniformly bullish since April. B. Riley raised its target to $65 on July 22, the day of this note. Stifel lifted to $70 from $50 on July 10. Baird initiated at Outperform with a $65 target on July 9. TD Cowen holds a more aggressive $80 target. The consensus mean sits at $63.38 against a current price of $56.22, implying around 12.7% upside on paper. EPS momentum factor scores are among the strongest in the universe — 82 percentile on 30-day momentum and 89 on 90-day — while the analyst recommendation differential ranks in the 93rd percentile, reflecting broad and building Street conviction. The bull case centres on Cohu's position in HBM inspection and AI-driven compute demand grafted onto its established automotive and industrial tester franchise. Bears point to the risk that an automotive and industrial semiconductor inventory correction crimps margins before the HBM ramp fully offsets it.
Insider activity adds a small cautionary note worth flagging. In May, CEO Luis Mueller sold 45,154 shares for roughly $2.1 million, the CFO sold 13,000 shares for $609,000, the Chairman sold 10,257 shares, and a lead independent director trimmed as well — a cluster of senior executive sales all executed in the same week around $44–$47 per share. The Chief Customer Officer has continued to sell in smaller increments every month since. Net 90-day insider value is net negative at approximately $4.3 million sold. These were all executed at prices well below Tuesday's $56 close, which cuts the near-term bearish read on the transactions somewhat — but the pattern of senior selling into strength is worth keeping in context given the stock's 140%-plus year-to-date run.
Recent earnings reactions have been asymmetric. The May 15 print produced a 9.7% one-day drop and a further 5% slide over five days. The April 30 print did the opposite — up 2% on the day and nearly 6% over five sessions. With the July 30 report now eight days away, the key variable is whether management's commentary on automotive and industrial recovery — and specifically on the HBM inspection ramp — matches the optimism baked into a series of rapidly rising analyst targets. Peers offer a mixed signal for the week: UCTT and ICHR both surged over 14% on July 21, while ONTO and LRCX each posted a negative week despite Tuesday's broad sector bounce. The divergence suggests the session's gains were macro-driven rather than company-specific, which makes Cohu's own results the next clean test of whether the stock's valuation re-rating holds.
See the live data behind this article on ORTEX.
Open COHU on ORTEX →ORTEX Market Intelligence content is generated by AI from a snapshot of ORTEX's proprietary data. Content is informational only and does not constitute investment advice.
