New Street Buy Upgrade Meets Post-Earnings Short Cover at Intel

Intel stock has risen to $95.53 after its Q4 print, shorts have cut 10.6% of their position in one week, and New Street Research just placed a $125 target on the stock. Three data points are pulling in the same direction, though options traders are not fully convinced.

The Upgrade That Stands Out

Pierre Ferragu at New Street Research moved INTC to Buy on October 26, setting a $125 target. That is $29.47 above the current price. It is also the only outright Buy call to arrive since the October correction began. The broader Street consensus remains at Hold, with 13 Buy ratings against 32 Holds. The mean target across all analysts sits at $117.71.

The contrast within the recent analyst activity is telling. TD Cowen and Susquehanna both lowered their targets in the days before the New Street upgrade, cutting to $95 and $105 respectively. JP Morgan upgraded to Neutral earlier in October but held its target at $85, below the current price. Ferragu's move to Buy is therefore not part of a trend. It is a single firm staking out a position that the rest of the Street has not followed.

Shorts Pull Back, Quietly

Borrowed shares fell to 151.6 million as of October 28, down from 168.1 million a week earlier. That is a 10.6% weekly decline, 1.6 standard deviations below Intel's typical weekly move over the past year. The previous two notes tracked the short position building steadily through September and holding through the Q3 miss. That accumulation has now reversed in a single week.

Short interest stands at 3.18% of free float. At that level it is not a primary driver of price, but the speed of the unwind is significant. This is covering, not attrition. The borrow market remains frictionless throughout: availability is effectively uncapped, with more than 5.2 billion shares still available to lend and a cost to borrow of 0.37%. No squeeze mechanics are in play.

The stock is up 2.8% on the week. The median one-week move among its closest semiconductor peers over the same period ran to a loss of around 1.3%.

Options: Puts Still Elevated

The one signal pointing against the post-earnings relief is the options put/call ratio. It stood at 0.88 on October 28, 1.24 standard deviations above its 20-day mean of 0.86. The October 27 reading of 0.89 was higher still. Traders are carrying more put protection than usual, even as the stock recovers and shorts trim.

That is not an extreme reading. The 52-week high on the PCR is 1.16, well above current levels. But relative to the recent baseline, there is more hedging in the options market than the short-cover story alone would suggest. The EV/EBITDA multiple of 18.3 has moved only marginally over 30 days, and the price-to-book has fallen from 4.96 to 4.03 over the same period, reflecting the October correction rather than a valuation recovery.

What to watch: The Q4 results are due today, October 29 after market close. The New Street $125 target and the direction of short covering over the following week will together indicate whether the post-earnings positioning shift was the start of a trend or a single print's worth of relief.