Texas Instruments enters the back half of May with a striking tension: a stock that has surged 37% in a month while nearly every insider with access to a sell button has used it.
The insider picture is the clearest signal this week. The CEO, CFO, and several senior vice presidents all sold shares in late April and early May — in total, the net 90-day flow represents roughly $77 million in net selling across the executive suite. Haviv Ilan, Chairman and CEO, sold 20,000 shares on May 4 at around $280. The Chief Accounting Officer followed on May 1. SVPs have been selling continuously since April 29. The pattern is not a single planned transaction — it is a cluster, timed almost precisely at the top of a sharp post-earnings run.
Short positioning tells a far less alarming story. Bears are actually retreating. Short interest has dropped 21% over the past month to 1.7% of the free float — a level so modest it barely registers as a headwind. Borrow is cheap at 0.43% annualised, and availability in the lending market remains extremely loose, with the 52-week utilisation peak sitting at just 2.2%. The short score of 30.5 is well below mid-range. There is no sign of a bear thesis building here — the shorts that ran up into and through the April sell-off have been covered in size.
Options positioning has edged toward caution but not alarm. The put/call ratio is running at 0.95, modestly above its 20-day average of 0.88 and about 0.65 standard deviations above the mean — nowhere near the defensive extremes of a year ago (52-week high: 1.22). Notably, the PCR was climbing steadily throughout early May, peaking near 1.03 last week before easing back. The direction of travel suggests investors are buying some insurance into the rally, but the positioning is measured rather than fearful.
The Street has been scrambling to keep up. After the April 22 earnings print — which sent the stock up 21% in a single session — virtually every covering analyst raised their target. JPMorgan lifted to $280 from $227. UBS moved to $295. TD Cowen went to $300. This week, Cantor Fitzgerald raised again to $300 while holding a Neutral rating. The mean target now stands at $280.63, which the stock has already blown through. The stock trades at roughly 35.6x earnings and 24.2x EV/EBITDA — both multiples are sharply higher on the month (PE up ~4 points in 30 days). EPS momentum is strong, ranking in the 86th percentile on the 30-day measure, and the analyst recommendation divergence factor scores in the 99th percentile, reflecting a Street that is broadly constructive but behind the price action.
The bull case rests on TXN's entrenched position in analog chips and embedded processors, with industrial and data centre end-markets viewed as durable growth drivers. The bear case centres on the sector's cyclicality, heavy China revenue exposure, and the question of whether the post-earnings re-rating has run ahead of fundamentals. With the mean price target now below the current price of $295, the Street is effectively telling investors that much of the good news is already in the stock.
The next earnings event is scheduled for July 20. Between now and then, the most interesting tension to track is whether insider selling continues at the current pace as the stock presses against — and above — analyst targets, and whether the post-earnings short-covering trend has fully run its course or still has room to go.
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