MaxLinear enters this week with one of the more striking short-covering stories in the semiconductor space — a stock that has more than tripled in a month, with short sellers retreating rapidly and options traders heavily skewed toward calls, yet company insiders heading firmly for the exit.
The short-covering has been dramatic. SI % of Free Float peaked near 7.1% in mid-April and has since collapsed to 4.6% — a drop of roughly one-third in five weeks. The move accelerated sharply after the April 23 earnings print, which sent the stock up 78% in a single session and 109% over the following five days. Shorts had little choice but to cover. Cost to borrow, which briefly spiked above 7.9% in late April during the scramble, has since normalised to just 0.46% — about as cheap as it gets for a stock of this profile. Availability is now extremely loose at 5,693%, meaning there are roughly 57 shares available to borrow for every one currently lent out. The lending market is no longer stressed; the squeeze dynamics that likely accelerated the rally have fully unwound.
Options positioning confirms the bullish lean. The put/call ratio has dropped to 0.27, more than 1.7 standard deviations below its 20-day average of 0.63. That places it near the lowest readings of the past year — investors are overwhelmingly buying calls rather than hedging with puts. The shift is stark: as recently as early May the PCR was running close to 0.75, reflecting genuine uncertainty. Now the options market reflects a crowd that has largely abandoned downside protection.
The Street reacted swiftly to the earnings shock. Loop Capital upgraded the stock to Buy with a new target of $75, up from $17, while Needham also upgraded to Buy with a $60 target. Stifel raised its target to $49 from $34. The consensus now stands at Buy across six analysts, with a mean target near $49 — though with the stock trading at $94.86, that figure already sits well below the current price, a signal that analyst target-setting has not yet caught up with the move. The ORTEX analyst recommendation divergence factor scores at 100, the highest possible reading, reflecting precisely this gap. EPS momentum is the standout factor score — ranked in the 96th percentile on a 30-day basis and the 91st on 90 days — consistent with a company where forward estimates have been revised sharply higher in a short window.
Insider activity tells a more cautious story. Since the stock cleared $75, directors and the Principal Accounting Officer have collectively sold more than $6 million in shares. Director Albert Moyer sold $1.2 million. Director Daniel Artusi sold $825,000. Connie Kwong, the Principal Accounting Officer, sold over $3.4 million across two transactions on May 8. The 90-day net position is positive only because of equity awards, not open-market purchases. None of these sales are individually alarming — compensation-linked selling after a 261% one-month gain is routine — but the absence of any insider buying at current levels is a data point worth noting given how far the stock has moved. CEO and founder Kishore Seendripu also trimmed his holding by 583,616 shares as recently as late March, before the big move.
Among correlated peers, the week has been mixed. INTC gained around 2.4% on the day but fell 8% on the week. AMD and QCOM also dropped 7-7.6% on the week, while SYNA managed a 3.4% gain. MXL's 3.2% weekly gain against a backdrop of peer weakness underlines how company-specific the April catalyst was — this is not a rising-tide semiconductor trade.
The next earnings event is scheduled for July 22. With the stock now trading at a P/E above 61x and a price-to-book near 16x — valuations that reflect the post-earnings re-rating almost entirely — attention over the coming weeks will focus on whether the fundamental inflection implied by the April results holds up in the next quarterly print.
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