TDAY enters the post-earnings session on April 30 with short sellers in retreat — but the options market telling a more cautious tale.
Short interest has fallen meaningfully over the past two weeks. The SI % of free float dropped from a peak near 19.1% in mid-April to 17.3% today — a roughly 8% decline in short shares over the week ending April 29. That kind of retreat is not trivial for a publishing name still carrying a significant short load. The official FINRA fortnightly figure, as of April 15, put short shares at 17.9 million — closely aligned with today's ORTEX estimate, lending credibility to the trend. Days to cover remain elevated at nearly nine, which means even at this reduced level, the exit trade is not a quick one. The borrow market, however, remains loosely structured: cost to borrow is a modest 0.53%, and availability is ample relative to historical tightness — well off the cost-to-borrow spike seen briefly in mid-April when CTB touched 1.55% for a day before retreating sharply.
Options positioning is the more interesting signal right now. The put/call ratio closed at 0.74 on April 29 — the highest reading of the past year outside of the 52-week peak of 0.77, and well above the 20-day mean of 0.62. The z-score of 1.09 is not extreme, but the directionality matters: the PCR has been climbing steadily since mid-April as calls have given ground to puts. That shift in options composition coincides with the stock's modest 2% weekly decline to $7.28, despite a respectable 7.2% gain over the past month. Traders were buying protection into today's print.
The print itself delivered a mixed result. Q1 revenue came in at $548.5 million, below the $551 million estimate — extending the revenue contraction trend from $571.6 million a year ago. On the bottom line, though, the company surprised: adjusted EPS of $0.10 beat the $(0.08) estimate by a wide margin, and net income swung to $19.9 million versus a $7.3 million loss in Q1 2025. The company reiterated its business outlook, which is the key takeaway for those watching whether the digital transition is stabilising the financials. The EV/EBITDA multiple has drifted down to 7.3x over the past month — a small but consistent compression that suggests the market has been pricing in continued revenue headwinds. The ORTEX short score of 68.5 ranks in the 6th percentile of the universe, reflecting persistently bearish short-side positioning even as the actual SI level has declined.
Institutional holders paint a fragmented picture. Two Seas Capital holds roughly 9.9% of shares, Apollo Global Management 8.3%, and Alta Fundamental Advisers 7.7% — all three are active managers with mandates that can tolerate the volatility inherent in a legacy media turnaround. BlackRock and Vanguard have added modestly in recent filings, suggesting passive index flows are gently growing. On the other side, D.E. Shaw trimmed over 1 million shares in Q4 2025, and SG Americas cut nearly 800,000 shares in Q1 2026 — a reminder that quant and broker-dealer books are lightening up on the name.
Insider activity from late March adds a final layer of texture. CEO Mike Reed sold 139,481 shares at $6.70 on March 24, raising around $934,000. CFO Trisha Gosser and Chief Accounting Officer Cindy Gallagher sold smaller amounts on the same day. All three transactions carried the lowest significance rating, and the sales likely reflect programmatic or tax-driven plans rather than conviction selling — the stock has since moved from $6.70 to $7.28. Still, the clustering of executive disposals at a single session is worth noting in the context of a stock where insider direction has been consistently outward.
The next test for TDAY is less about whether the business is declining and more about whether the rate of revenue decline is stabilising enough to justify the current EV/EBITDA multiple — and whether a fresh short-score reading, coming off today's earnings surprise, causes the short-side positioning to reset lower still.
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