TPR heads into its August 13 earnings report with the Street firmly on the bull side — and short sellers slowly retreating to match.
Short sellers have been covering, not adding. Short interest has fallen roughly 7% over the past month to 8% of the free float, with the daily estimate now near 16.4 million shares. Borrow is almost frictionless: cost-to-borrow is just 0.40%, down more than 20% over the month, and availability is extremely loose at over 3,400% — meaning shares available to borrow dwarf those already short by a wide margin. There is no meaningful squeeze pressure here. Options positioning has nudged slightly more defensive than its recent average, with the put/call ratio at 1.19 against a 20-day mean of 1.15, though the z-score of 0.84 falls well short of alarm territory. The stock closed at $162.36 on Friday, up 7% on the week and 11% over the past month, bringing its year-to-date advance to more than 27%.
The analyst community has turned notably constructive. JP Morgan raised its target to $211 this week while keeping an Overweight rating. Telsey Advisory lifted to $175 on the same day. Both moves came ahead of the print — a signal of genuine conviction rather than post-hoc revision. Morgan Stanley reinstated coverage with an Overweight in early July. The mean target now sits at $168, though several individual targets, including UBS at $230 and JP Morgan at $211, imply materially more upside from here. Bulls point to Tapestry's direct-to-consumer push, its $4 billion shareholder return commitment, and forward EPS momentum that has swung sharply positive — factor scores rank EPS momentum in roughly the 95th to 96th percentile of the universe. Bears counter with a structural concern: the Coach brand generated around 80% of revenue and well over 90% of operating profit in fiscal 2025, leaving the company exposed to handbag fashion cycles and the ongoing erosion of Kate Spade. The recent divestiture of Stuart Weitzman narrows that diversification further.
There is one note of caution buried in the recent earnings history. The last print, in May, produced a one-day drop of more than 10% and a five-day loss of about 12%. The February print before that delivered a 17% gain on the day. The stock has historically moved sharply in either direction on results — a wide distribution that makes positioning here feel more like a coin flip than a consensus trade despite the bullish surface narrative.
The August 13 report is therefore a test of whether the strong coach-led momentum the Street has priced in can hold against scrutiny of Kate Spade trends, tariff exposure, and whether the margin story justifies a stock now trading at nearly 20x earnings.
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