JBL has delivered its fiscal Q4 earnings release today, and the week's setup heading into the print was as benign as short-side data gets: shorts retreating, borrow costs near lows, availability loose, and the Street still carrying targets well above the current price.
The positioning picture was unusually clean for an earnings event. Short interest has fallen 17% over the past month to 2.7% of free float, a level that ranks toward the bottom of any meaningful short-conviction gauge. The borrow market reflects that: cost to borrow has eased 12% on the week and 12% over the past month to just 0.42%, and availability at 1,428% means the lending pool is barely touched, with roughly 44.5 million shares available to borrow against an already-thin short base. That is the loosest availability reading in the 30-day window, and it tells you shorts have not been pressing into the release. Options did lean slightly more defensive as the date approached, with the put/call ratio finishing at 0.72 on September 29, around 1.2 standard deviations above its 20-day average of 0.68. That is elevated but contained, well below the 52-week high of 1.04, and reflects measured rather than alarmed hedging.
The Street's posture remains constructive, though the tone shifted modestly in recent weeks. Goldman Sachs maintained its Buy rating on September 8 but cut its price target from $482 to $375, citing what appears to be near-term caution rather than a change in fundamental view. That brought the mean target to $427, still 34% above the closing price of $318.84. Broader analyst direction remains tilted positive: JPMorgan holds Overweight with a $450 target, Barclays holds Overweight at $426, and Stifel, Raymond James and Baird all carry Buy-equivalent ratings with targets in the $440 to $460 range. UBS upgraded to Buy in August and holds at $430. The bull case centres on Jabil's deepening exposure to AI infrastructure and connected technology, with hyperscaler partnerships and specialised capacity expansion cited as the medium-term drivers. Bears point to component constraints in HBM memory and high-density-interconnect PCBs as a ceiling on how quickly the company can scale FY27 capacity, and flag M&A execution risk against an asset-light strategic posture. Valuation multiples have moved in Jabil's favour over the month: the price-to-earnings multiple has compressed by roughly 3.5 turns over 30 days to 16.2x, while EV/EBITDA has come in by nearly 1.8 turns to 9.2x. The momentum picture is striking: EPS momentum ranks in the 97th percentile on a 30-day basis and 85th percentile over 90 days, though the EPS surprise rank sits at a more modest 35th percentile.
Institutional ownership is broadly stable and skewed toward passive accumulators. BlackRock holds 9.7% and added 453,000 shares through August. JP Morgan Asset Management added 949,000 shares through September 1, one of the larger recent active additions in the register. Wellington Management, by contrast, has trimmed from 5.3% to 4.1% as of its November 2025 13G/A filing, crossing below the 5% reporting threshold. No 13D activist is on the register. Insider activity from recent months is modest in aggregate: the 90-day net is negative at roughly 4,800 shares, driven mainly by the CHRO selling around $273,000 worth across multiple transactions in July at prices between $315 and $330. A director made a small open-market purchase of 500 shares at $300 in mid-July, but the aggregate insider signal is neutral rather than directional. Retail attention, per Wikimedia data, is running about 1.5 standard deviations above Jabil's own 90-day baseline as of September 27, consistent with the earnings approach drawing fresh eyes to the name.
The stock gained 3.2% on the week to close at $318.84, extending a 5.8% one-month move. Peers moved broadly in the same direction: KEYS added 3.8% on the week, AEIS gained 3.6%, and SANM added 3.2%. FLEX and TTMI lagged, down 0.5% and 3.7% respectively, suggesting the week's move in JBL was not simply sector beta. The one available earnings day reaction in the recent history showed a 2.6% gain on September 24, though today's Q4 result will be the more complete read.
With Q4 now in the market, the attention turns to how management frames the FY27 capacity expansion against the component supply picture, and whether the Goldman target cut in early September proves conservative or prescient relative to the guidance Jabil sets today.
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