Taboola Sellers Circle After Earnings Wreck

Short positioning is modest and not the story here. Short interest runs at 3.5% of the free float — up 40% over the past month but still relatively contained at 9 million shares. Borrow is cheap at 0.67% annualised and has risen 33% on the week, though from a very low base. Availability in the lending market is extremely loose: roughly 194 million shares remain available to borrow against 9 million already out — a ratio that puts no pressure on existing shorts and offers no squeeze dynamic to bulls. The ORTEX short score has actually dipped from 43.6 to 39.2 over the past two weeks, suggesting the data does not see a squeeze setup forming. Options positioning is similarly benign. The put/call ratio of 0.14 is barely above its 20-day average and sits well below the 52-week high of 0.18 hit on August 5 — options traders are not loading up on downside protection at current levels.

The Street is still nominally bullish but the targets are moving the wrong way. Following the earnings print, TD Cowen trimmed its target from $6.00 to $5.00 and Benchmark cut from $6.50 to $5.50, both maintaining Buy ratings. Rosenblatt held its $7.00 Buy. The consensus mean target is $5.46, implying 42% upside from the current price — but that gap is a product of the stock falling through targets, not targets rising to meet opportunity. The analyst recommendation factor score ranks in the 95th percentile, which reflects the uniformly bullish skew, but EPS surprise ranks in just the 23rd percentile and forward EPS growth sits at the 17th percentile. The valuation is not demanding — EV/EBITDA is running near 4.8x — but cheap multiples have not attracted buyers in the current environment. The bull case rests on the Yahoo partnership, consecutive EBITDA profitability, and AI-driven ad targeting; the bear case points to Google policy headwinds, competitive pressure on native ad spend, and the drag from fixed publisher minimum guarantees.

BlackRock added nearly 7.8 million shares through July, and State Street added 3.1 million — both moves reflect passive and quantitative rebalancing more than conviction bets. The more notable ownership signal is what Apollo is doing: a 12-million-share trim in May from a 21% stake is a large holder managing its position down, and further reductions would represent a consistent source of supply.

The next earnings event is November 4. Between now and then, the questions worth tracking are whether management guidance issued on August 5 holds, whether the CFO and CEO selling continues at lower prices, and whether any of the Street's Buy-rated analysts begin to reassess their ratings rather than just their targets.