Texas Pacific Land Corporation heads into its August 5 earnings print having shed 8% over the past month — and with short sellers adding to positions throughout the decline.
Short interest has climbed meaningfully in recent weeks. It now accounts for nearly 19% of the free float, with shorts adding roughly 8% more exposure in the past seven trading days alone. That brings the short position to around 4.36 million shares — its highest level in the 30-day window. The ORTEX short score has risen alongside it, moving from 60.2 on July 22 to 63.2 by July 30, a steady drift that reflects growing negative conviction. Yet the borrow market tells a less confrontational story: availability runs at 344%, meaning there are more than three shares available to lend for every share already borrowed, and cost to borrow remains just 0.44%. Shorts are building, but they are not fighting for scarce stock. Options positioning is equally calm — the put/call ratio of 0.59 is almost exactly in line with its 20-day average, offering no signal of heightened defensive hedging.
The bull-bear debate on TPL hinges on a valuation question that has no easy answer. Bulls point to the asset base: Permian Basin surface rights and royalty income that are structurally difficult to replicate, and a growth profile that ORTEX factor scores rank in the 96th percentile on dividends and top-decile on short score relative peers. The EV/EBITDA multiple has compressed roughly five points over the past month, moving to around 20.5x, which some framing as a more palatable entry. The most recent analyst consensus, set on July 8, carries a mean price target of $443.50 against a current price near $402 — implying modest upside. Bears point to what that multiple still demands: a P/E near 30x for a land company whose near-term earnings are leveraged to oil and gas activity, and a stock that has lost ground even as most E&P peers closed the past week flat to slightly positive. and both gained on the week; and also held up better than TPL's 4% weekly decline.
The earnings history adds a specific caution. After each of the past two quarterly prints, TPL fell roughly 7% in the session immediately following and around 10% over the subsequent five trading days. That pattern is now part of the backdrop for anyone sizing a position ahead of Wednesday's release. Horizon Kinetics — the stock's largest holder at nearly 15% of shares — has continued buying single shares at market price through the decline, a pattern that reads more as index maintenance than a directional call, given the trivial transaction sizes.
The print will test whether the compression in the stock over the past month reflects rational concern about the pace of Permian activity, or whether it is an overshoot that the underlying royalty stream can contradict.
See the live data behind this article on ORTEX.
Open TPL 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.
