Samsara heads into its September 3 earnings report with short sellers unwinding positions at pace — a notable reversal that contrasts sharply with the stock's modest weekly dip.
The short-covering story is the clearest signal this week. Short interest has fallen roughly 17% over the past month, dropping from above 41 million shares to around 34.5 million — now representing 9.9% of the free float. The steepest leg of that unwind happened in a single session around August 10, when nearly 3.5 million shares were covered. Despite that headline-level positioning, the borrow market itself shows no sign of stress: availability is running at roughly 370% relative to current short interest, well above the 52-week low of 260%, meaning there is ample capacity for new shorts to enter if sentiment turns. Cost to borrow has slipped to around 0.52% — near its lowest level of the past 30 days — confirming the borrow is essentially uninhibited. Options traders are equally relaxed, with the put/call ratio at 0.59, barely a tenth of a standard deviation above its 20-day average. Defensive hedging into next month's print is not a theme in the derivatives market right now.
The Street picture is mixed but tilting constructive. Two target-price raises arrived this week alone: RBC Capital lifted its Outperform target from $42 to $50 on August 14, and Truist Securities raised its Hold target from $30 to $38 on August 19 — the latter still a touch below the current price of $39.58, keeping the cautious stance intact. Piper Sandler moved the other way earlier in the month, downgrading from Overweight to Neutral while holding a $40 target. The consensus mean price target sits at $45.08, implying roughly 14% upside from current levels. Factor scores add some texture: the analyst recommendation differential ranks in the 95th percentile of the universe, suggesting the breadth of bullish coverage is unusually wide, while the ORTEX short score has eased from around 63 a fortnight ago to 59 — reflecting the month's unwinding. The days-to-cover rank of 7 is notably low, meaning any squeeze dynamics would likely resolve quickly.
The bull case centres on Samsara's ARR trajectory — up 30% year-on-year — first-time GAAP profitability, and a 400% surge in Asset Tags ARR pointing to traction in newer product lines. Bears flag a 20% year-on-year decline in Heavy Duty Truck sales and the risk that subscription-driven growth stalls if competition intensifies in the connected-operations space. That tension lands directly on September 3.
Institutional flows offer one additional data point worth noting. T. Rowe Price added over 22 million shares in the quarter to June 30, a material accumulation that makes it the second-largest institutional holder at roughly 6.3% of shares. Wellington Management also added meaningfully in the same period. Against that, both co-founders — CEO Sanjit Biswas and CTO John Bicket — sold approximately $2.2 million each on August 5–6, transactions consistent with pre-arranged plans but worth flagging given the proximity to the upcoming earnings date. The net 90-day insider figure is modestly positive at roughly 565,000 shares, so the direction is not alarming.
The recent earnings history adds the final layer of context. The last three quarterly prints all produced sharp day-one declines — down 4%, 7%, and 13% respectively — yet each was followed by recovery over the subsequent week, with five-day returns of 9%, 9%, and 7% in two of those three cases. The stock closed this week down about 1.8%, lagging peers like WDAY, which gained 5.2%, and GWRE, which held roughly flat. Whether that relative lag resolves through the earnings event — and whether the short-covering trend continues into September — is the setup to watch over the next fortnight.
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