TFI International heads into its October 23 Q3 earnings print with borrow costs spiking sharply, the stock down on the month, and short interest nudging higher after a period of quiet.
The most eye-catching move this week is in the lending market. Cost to borrow jumped to 1.74% on September 29, up from 0.59% a week earlier, a rise of more than 220% in five sessions. That is the highest rate in the 30-day window by a wide margin; for the six weeks prior, the rate rarely exceeded 1% and spent much of late August below 0.6%. Availability tells a different story, however. With over 30 million shares available to borrow against roughly 930,000 shares short, availability remains extremely loose at around 2,238% of short interest, even after tightening sharply from above 9,999% earlier in the month. The lending pool is not constrained. The cost spike looks more like a data-level repricing event or a short-term friction in the borrow pipeline than evidence of a genuine squeeze building. Short interest itself is modest, at 1.1% of free float, and has risen only fractionally over the week, up about 1.8%, after a month that saw it decline. With a short score of 31, rising from near 29.5 two weeks ago but still well below anything that would register as elevated, there is no case for calling this a high-conviction short.
The Street picture is complicated by stale data. The most recent analyst consensus on file dates to late 2023 and carries a mean price target of around CAD 131, well below the current CAD 171.95 print. That gap is too large to quote with confidence, and the analyst data should be treated as outdated rather than directional. What the factor scores do offer is more useful: EPS momentum ranks in the 81st percentile over 30 days and the 87th over 90 days, and the 12-month forward EPS year-on-year increase score ranks in the 92nd percentile. Earnings revision activity has been running strongly upward. The PE multiple has compressed about 1.7 points over the past 30 days to 16.3x, while EV/EBITDA has eased to 9.0x, also lower on the month. The dividend score ranks in the 98th percentile, though the most recent dividend data on file dates to mid-2022 and should not be cited as current. The EV/EBIT score ranks in only the 26th percentile, a signal the market is not assigning premium quality pricing here.
Among its closest peers, TFI is the laggard this week despite having outperformed on a year-to-date basis. SAIA fell 3.5% over the five sessions and KNX dropped 4.3%, so the sector as a whole was weak. TFI's 2.3% weekly decline sits in the middle of that range. ODFL was the relative standout, essentially flat on the week.
Ownership is anchored by a small number of large holders. La Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec holds 7.7% of shares and, per a Schedule 13G/A filed in February 2026, had raised its stake to 8.6% at that point from 6.9% previously. There are no 13D activist filers on the register. The CEO and significant shareholder Alain Bedard holds approximately 6% of shares outstanding with no recent change reported. On the insider trading side, the most substantive recent activity was a pair of purchases by Rosemary Turner in August at around USD 140 per share, totalling roughly CAD 1 million equivalent. That was a buy executed below the current price, though the significance score is modest at 3 out of 10. Net insider activity over the past 90 days is negative overall, with a net outflow of approximately USD 11.6 million.
The last earnings print, on July 27, produced a 1-day decline of 1.6% and a 5-day decline of 6.2%. The Q3 release on October 23 is the next material event on the calendar. The question at that print will be whether the strong EPS revision momentum visible in the factor scores translates into an actual beat, or whether the valuation compression of recent weeks reflects concerns the Street has not yet captured in its estimates.
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