VPG Drops 31% in a Month, But Shorts Are Retreating

Vishay Precision Group has spent the past month in a sharp drawdown, with the stock down 31% over 30 days to $54.24, yet the bears are quietly pulling back rather than pressing the trade.

Short interest, at 11% of free float, remains at an elevated level in absolute terms. But the direction of travel tells a different story: shorts fell roughly 16% between mid-October and late October, dropping from around 1.64 million shares to 1.35 million. That unwinding coincided almost exactly with the stock's steepest leg down, a pattern where covering and price declines run together rather than against each other. The borrow market shows no signs of stress. Cost to borrow has edged up 25% over the week to 0.57%, but that figure remains low in absolute terms. Availability is exceptionally loose at 1,212%, meaning roughly twelve shares are available to borrow for every one already shorted. The ORTEX short score sits at 51, squarely in the middle of its range, and has actually eased from the mid-54s seen in late October. Options traders are leaning the same way: the put/call ratio of 0.27 is slightly below its 20-day average of 0.29, suggesting no unusual demand for downside protection despite the drawdown.

The bull-versus-bear tension sits squarely in valuation. The stock was up 78% year-to-date at its peak and analysts who cover VPG have maintained Buy ratings throughout. B. Riley Securities and Lake Street both hold Buy ratings, with targets set in the $98 to $105 range as of their most recent actions in May and August. At today's $54.24, that implies roughly 70 to 90% upside on the Street consensus, though it is worth flagging that the most recent analyst update came in early August and predates the sharp October sell-off. With the stock now sitting below those August targets and only a few firms actively covering it, those price targets may not fully reflect the current picture. Valuation multiples have compressed meaningfully: the price-to-book ratio has dropped roughly 0.9 points over 30 days to 2.0, and the PE ratio has fallen around 18 turns over the same period to 34x. The EV/EBITDA of 14.6x has held more stable. The EPS momentum score for the past 30 days ranks in the 79th percentile, the strongest single factor reading on the stock, though the 90-day reading has cooled to the 47th percentile.

Ownership flow gives some useful texture. T. Rowe Price added nearly 137,000 shares in the quarter to September 30, lifting its stake to 5.6% of shares. Columbia Management Investment Advisers added 186,000 shares over the same period. Both are significant additions for a company with a market cap around $720 million. BlackRock also nudged up its position, the three moves together account for the most active institutional repositioning visible in the recent data. Portolan Capital Management filed a 13G/A in May showing its stake rising to 8.31% from 6.72%, making it effectively the largest active institutional holder. No 13D activist filings are on record, so the increased ownership appears to reflect investment rather than agitation. As always, 13D/G disclosures are event-driven around the 5% threshold and positions may have shifted since the last filing.

What to watch next is the February 2027 earnings date, and specifically whether the institutional buyers who added in Q3 see the October sell-off as noise or as a reason to reassess, given that the stock's Street coverage remains thin and the gap between current price and analyst targets has widened sharply.