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InterDigital heads into its October 29 earnings print with short sellers quietly rebuilding positions and a short score that has held stubbornly elevated for weeks.
Short interest is the most active signal on IDCC right now. At 11.4% of the free float, the position is already high in absolute terms. It has risen roughly 2.6% over the past week and is up again this week, adding a further 2.2% in a single session on October 13 to reach 2.92 million shares short. That is a steady, unhurried accumulation rather than a sharp spike, but the direction has been consistent since late September. The ORTEX short score reinforces the picture: it has held in the 74 to 76 range for the past two weeks, printing 76.1 on October 12, which ranks in just the 3rd percentile for short score across the universe. That is a meaningful bearish tilt in positioning terms.
The lending market tells a somewhat different story, and the contrast matters. Despite that elevated short interest, the borrow is not squeezed. Cost to borrow is only 0.53%, having drifted slightly higher on the week but still near the bottom of any meaningful range. Availability has actually tightened this week, dropping to 97.6% from above 107% last week, which means the ratio of shares available to borrow relative to shares already borrowed has come off. But at 97.6% it remains comfortable, well above the 52-week trough of 84.3% seen in mid-September, and nowhere near the levels that tend to create short-covering pressure. Options positioning is likewise calm. The put/call ratio of 0.69 is almost exactly in line with its 20-day average of 0.68, with a z-score barely above zero. There is no hedging surge into this earnings date.
The Street is broadly constructive on the stock, though the most recent formal analyst changes are too old to carry much weight at the current price. Jefferies raised its target to $475 last October and upgraded the stock from Hold to Buy the week before that, moves that looked prescient given the subsequent rally. But with the stock now at $332.88 and those targets some eleven months stale, they are context rather than a live read on valuation. The consensus sits at three buy ratings. The forward PE of 28.7x and EV/EBITDA of 17.3x are not demanding for a company whose factor scores show an EPS surprise rank in the 91st percentile, meaning it has a strong track record of beating estimates. The dividend score of 96 is notable but the dividend history in the data is stale from 2022, so that figure likely reflects yield and consistency rather than a recent event. The bull case centres on streaming royalties not yet in models and IoT device growth via 5G standards; the bear case is the ongoing Samsung arbitration and a smartphone market with limited unit growth.
Two institutional holders stand out from the latest filings. T. Rowe Price added 553,000 shares in the period to September 30, lifting its stake to 13% of shares outstanding, making it the second-largest holder behind BlackRock. That is a substantial addition for a name this size. BlackRock, meanwhile, disclosed a trim from 16% to 13.1% in its last 13G/A filing in April, and now shows 15.1% in the holdings data, suggesting it has been rebuilding since. No activist holder sits on the register, and all 13D/G filers are passive, consistent with the disclosure note that stakes are as last disclosed around the 5% threshold.
Insider activity over the past 90 days has been modestly net negative, with a net of -4,800 shares sold and about $1.6 million in net disposals. Most of the selling is mechanical: the CTO has been selling 1,500 shares a month under a 10b5-1 plan, and the CEO's September 15 transactions were a grant-and-withholding cycle rather than discretionary trading. There is nothing in the insider register that reads as a conviction signal in either direction.
The last earnings print, on July 30, produced a 16.7% single-day gain and a 25.8% five-day move, a substantial reward for a beat. With the stock having given back about 5% over the past month and short sellers adding steadily into that weakness, the setup for October 29 is one to watch: the question is whether the consistent short accumulation reflects informed positioning ahead of the print, or simply a hedge against a stock that has already run hard and carries real arbitration risk.
See the live data behind this article on ORTEX.
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