International Money Express heads into the post-earnings stretch with short sellers backing away fast — even as the company just missed estimates by a wide margin.
The headline tension is a striking divergence: IMXI reported Q1 earnings that missed by $0.22 per share on May 11, and the stock fell 12.6% on the day. Yet short interest dropped 14% over the same week, pulling back from roughly 1.53 million shares to 1.30 million. That is not how bear conviction usually behaves after an earnings stumble. The stock has since steadied, closing at $15.85 and recovering almost all of the post-print loss to trade roughly flat on the week.
The positioning picture is not aggressive on either side. Short interest now amounts to 4.4% of the free float — present but not extreme. What is notable is the speed of the reversal: shorts built sharply through late April, pushing the position up more than 32% over the prior month, before abruptly covering as the print landed. Borrow conditions give them little reason to stay patient, with availability wide and cost to borrow a modest 0.92% — barely changed on the week and well below levels that would signal a crowded trade. The ORTEX short score has also declined from around 43 earlier in the month to 40, drifting away from elevated territory. Options lean modestly defensive, with the put/call ratio at 0.24 — above its 20-day average of 0.16 but only about one standard deviation higher. That reads as mildly cautious rather than alarmed.
The Street remains divided. The consensus is a hold, with six analysts on that view, and all recent analyst activity predates the six-month threshold — the last logged change was BMO Capital lowering its target to $18 in November 2025. The current stock price at $15.85 implies limited upside to even the more conservative targets on record, which is consistent with the hold-heavy consensus. Valuation is inexpensive in absolute terms: the trailing PE runs near 5x and the EV/EBITDA ratio near 3.5x — multiples that reflect either deep value or genuine fundamental concern about the remittance corridor the company serves. Factor scores are unremarkable across the board, with EPS surprise ranking in just the 13th percentile, confirming the pattern of missing estimates.
The institutional picture adds one more layer of texture. Goldman Sachs filed a Schedule 13G on May 11 — the same day as earnings — disclosing a new position. That is an unusual coincidence. Meanwhile, the top holders include AllianceBernstein and BlackRock both adding modestly, and Alberta Investment Management building a more material stake, up 277,800 shares as of March 31. Insider activity from late February showed a coordinated cluster of sells from the CEO, CFO, and COO, all at prices close to where the stock trades now. Those sales were small in dollar terms — the CEO's two February transactions combined for roughly $164,000 — and the trade significance score was low, suggesting routine plan-driven activity rather than a directional signal.
The highest-impact news item this week is a May 13 report flagging that New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani is involving himself in an international M&A deal related to IMXI — the context appears to be activist or political scrutiny of the remittance business, a recurring theme for the sector given immigration policy dynamics. This is the story to watch heading into the next earnings date, confirmed for August 5. Whether that external political pressure on the remittance corridor — alongside a Q1 miss — prompts a fresh round of short building, or whether the recent covering reflects genuine floor-finding, is the question the data does not yet answer.
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