The New York Times Company heads into its May 6 Q1 print with short sellers retreating sharply from April's extreme positioning, even as a fresh week-over-week pickup hints that not everyone has covered.
The most striking feature of the short interest data is how far it has unwound. Short interest climbed as high as nearly 10% of free float on April 1 — the sharpest squeeze pressure of the year — before collapsing to around 5.8% by April 30. That's still meaningfully above where it spent most of February and early March. The week-on-week reading has ticked back up 15.8%, so the retreat may have stalled. Borrow conditions remain relaxed: the cost to borrow is just 0.44%, and availability is wide, meaning new short positions face no friction to establish. The borrow market does not look like a squeeze setup.
The analyst picture is split — and the split is genuinely interesting. Citi's Jason Bazinet raised his target to $94 in late March while keeping a Buy, making him the clear bull on the desk. BofA initiated at Neutral with an $84 target in April, landing right between the stock's recent price of $78.72 and Citi's upside case. JPMorgan holds Overweight at $74, which already sits below the current price — a sign that the Street's positive ratings are not uniformly demanding. The consensus holds at Hold. Bulls point to digital ARPU growing 3.6% year-on-year and improving subscriber growth projections; bears flag intense competition, rising costs, and an advertising market that remains vulnerable to a broader economic softening.
One ownership note deserves attention. Berkshire Hathaway and The Linonia Partnership both appear as new holders in the most recent institutional filings, each building positions of around 5 million shares. Their combined entry adds credibility to the bull case and may partly explain why the sharp April short position has not been rebuilt more aggressively. At the same time, the CEO sold roughly 52,000 shares at around $79.70 in early March — just above current levels — which tempers the insider narrative.
After the last two earnings prints, the stock fell on the day and continued lower through the week, dropping around 4.3% and 1.5% respectively on day one. The May 6 print will test whether the subscription growth story can accelerate enough to justify a P/E of roughly 27.6x at a moment when the stock has already shed 6% over the past month.
See the live data behind this article on ORTEX.
Open NYT on ORTEX →ORTEX Market Intelligence content is generated by AI from a snapshot of ORTEX's proprietary data. Content is informational only and does not constitute investment advice.
