FOXA enters the post-earnings stretch in an unusual position: the stock is up 6% on the week and 8% over the past month, yet short sellers are beating a visible retreat — and options traders have just shifted away from the most defensive posture of the past year.
Shorts have been unwinding at a meaningful pace. Short interest as a percentage of the free float has dropped from roughly 16.8% in early April to 13.6% now — a decline of nearly 18% over the past month, with the sharpest leg lower coming this week. The speed of that exit is notable. For most of April, SI was grinding slowly south; from May 4 onwards it accelerated, falling around 1.8 percentage points in less than two weeks. At the same time, the borrow market tells a relaxed story. Cost to borrow hovers around 0.52% — well below any level that would imply squeeze risk — and availability, while not tracked in extremes here, has eased broadly in line with declining short demand. The ORTEX short score, which peaked near 67 in late April, has pulled back to 63.2 and is now below its 10-day range. The market is effectively flagging that the bearish thesis is losing traction.
Options positioning reinforces the shift. The put/call ratio has dropped sharply from a 52-week high of 2.90 in late April to 2.21 — still elevated in absolute terms, but falling fast and now essentially in line with its 20-day average of 2.29. The z-score is near zero, meaning the defensive hedging that dominated for several weeks has largely normalised. What's striking is the timeline: the PCR was running north of 2.85 for the best part of two weeks heading into the May 11 earnings release, then collapsed the moment results were in. That's the footprint of event-driven protection being unwound, not a structural change in sentiment.
The Street took the results as a prompt to nudge targets higher. Several analysts raised price targets yesterday — Evercore ISI lifted to $73, JP Morgan to $70, Barclays to $67, and Wells Fargo to $71 — while all four maintained their existing ratings. None upgraded. The consensus remains buy on the headline, but seven buy ratings sit alongside meaningful neutral-to-hold representation, and the mean price target near $74 implies only modest upside from the current $66.16 close. Bulls point to Fox News's structural advantage in live ad-supported content, the upcoming 2026 mid-term election cycle as a record ad spending catalyst, and the profitable streaming operation in Tubi. Bears flag continued cord-cutting exposure and the narrower content portfolio following the 2019 Disney asset sale. On valuation, the stock trades at roughly 12.8x trailing earnings and 8.1x EV/EBITDA — neither cheap nor stretched for a company with these characteristics, and both multiples have been compressing slightly over the past 30 days as the stock moved higher faster than estimates.
The most recent insider activity is worth flagging, though it predates this week. In mid-March, CEO Lachlan Murdoch sold shares across multiple tranches totalling roughly $26 million in aggregate, with COO John Nallen selling an additional $12.5 million concurrently. The sales were executed around the $57–$60 range — well below the current price — suggesting either routine portfolio management or a view at that time that the stock was fairly valued near those levels. With FOXA now trading nearly 15% above the prices at which the CEO was a seller, that context is worth holding.
The 6% weekly gain came directly on the back of Q3 earnings, where the stock jumped just over 5% on the day of the report. Given that the prior earnings print in February also produced an 8% post-results move, Fox has now delivered back-to-back strong reactions. The PCR normalisation, the accelerating short cover, and the analyst target upgrades all point to the same conclusion: the earnings overhang is gone. What to watch next is whether the political advertising cycle — and any further clarity on the scale of the mid-term election revenue — gives the stock a second leg, or whether the absence of a near-term catalyst means the post-earnings momentum fades back toward where the sell-side is clustered.
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