FormFactor heads into its Q1 2026 earnings call on May 15 with the analyst community turning decisively more constructive — even as the stock fell sharply on the day before the preview was written.
The most striking pre-earnings development is the analyst upgrade cluster. Craig-Hallum moved the stock to Buy with a $175 target on May 12, while B. Riley lifted its target to $165 the same day despite maintaining a Neutral rating. Both actions follow a wave of target increases on April 30, when TD Cowen, Citigroup, and Evercore all raised their numbers — in some cases from levels as low as $80 to $133–$165. The Street consensus remains Hold with a mean target of ~$145, but the direction of travel is clearly upward. Bulls point to FormFactor's positioning in AI packaging and advanced wafer probe cards, where AI-driven demand from customers including Nvidia is driving an expected revenue and gross margin expansion into calendar year 2026. The bear case is more nuanced than outright skepticism: the concern centres on the Systems segment, where seasonal weakness and the impact of the Cascade Microtech acquisition may weigh on near-term revenues, even as the longer-run CPO and quantum probe card opportunities look promising.
The stock's reaction makes the analyst enthusiasm look premature in the short run. FORM fell 12.8% on May 12 to $132.02 — a sharper drop than close peers (-6.0%), (-2.2%), (-3.7%), and (-1.8%), all of which took smaller hits on the same session. Over the month FORM is still up roughly 6.6%, having run meaningfully into the print, which may explain some of the one-day air pocket. The stock traded as high as ~$149 earlier in the week, and the CEO and CFO both sold shares on May 5–7 at $144–$149 — award-and-sell sequences tied to vesting, but notable given the timing just ahead of results.
Short positioning provides limited signal here. At 4.1% of free float, short interest is modest rather than aggressive, even though it has climbed 24% over the past month and ticked up again last week. Borrow availability remains ample, with costs running at just 0.47% — well within normal range — and the ORTEX short score of 35 sits in the lower half of the universe. Options positioning has swung to leaning bullish: the put/call ratio dropped to 0.45 on May 12, below its 20-day average of 0.47, driven by a shift from the more hedged readings of 0.59–0.62 seen earlier in the week. EPS momentum factor scores rank in the 90th percentile on a 30-day basis, and forward EPS year-on-year growth ranks in the 79th percentile — the market is pricing in execution, not a turnaround.
The earnings print will test whether FormFactor can demonstrate the margin trajectory that underpins the aggressive target-price revisions of the last two weeks, particularly given how quickly the stock was sold on the session following this analyst enthusiasm.
See the live data behind this article on ORTEX.
Open FORM 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.
