Intel enters the final days of May having added 11.5% on the week and nearly 50% over the past month, trading at $123.52 — yet the mean analyst price target remains $87.76, leaving the stock roughly 41% above consensus.
That gap is the defining tension this week. Since the last note flagged the bifurcation, the stock has pushed higher still. The bullish cluster — Citigroup at $130 and Benchmark at $140, both raised on May 18 — now sits close to or below the market price. The rest of the Street is trailing badly. Mizuho raised to $124 (Neutral) on May 12, which the stock has already passed through. JPMorgan's Underweight carries a $45 target. Barclays is at $65, Equal-Weight. The broad consensus remains Hold, with 31 analysts sitting on the fence against just 10 buys. The EPS momentum factor score is notable — a 98th-percentile reading on the 90-day measure — and the analyst recommendation divergence score ranks in the 89th percentile, reflecting just how wide the bull-bear spread has grown. The PE multiple has expanded roughly 28 points over the past month to 97x, a level that prices in a very sharp earnings recovery.
Positioning in the lending market is telling a completely different story. Short interest at 2.8% of free float is modest by any measure — and it has been falling. It declined about 1.8% over the week, and borrow costs at 0.44% are historically cheap, down more than 20% over the past month. Availability is essentially unlimited, with the lending pool showing no constraint whatsoever. That combination — low and falling SI, cheap borrow, abundant supply — signals that short sellers are not pressing the case aggressively even as the stock has nearly doubled in two months. Options confirm the lack of urgency on the bear side. The put/call ratio at 1.06 is actually slightly below its 20-day average of 1.09, and well off the 52-week high of 1.16 reached in mid-May. Options positioning has become less defensive, not more, as the stock has rallied.
The April 23 earnings print is the catalyst behind much of this move. The stock jumped 26% on that day and finished the following five sessions up nearly 45%. The next read is scheduled for July 23. The May 13 print — a separate event in the data — moved the stock down 3.9% on the day before recovering. Historically, Intel reactions have been sharp in both directions, and the next quarter will arrive with the stock trading at a substantial premium to where most analysts currently sit.
Institutional ownership offers some context. BlackRock added roughly 15.3 million shares through April, Capital Research added 26.7 million, and Fidelity (FMR) added 26.7 million — all reported through April 30. Those flows predate much of the latest rally leg. Whether those buyers are content holders at current prices or potential sellers into strength is the ownership question that matters most heading into July. The peer group has been strong across the board — AMD added 19.7% on the week, MU an extraordinary 31.4%, and QCOM gained 22.2% — so some of Intel's move reflects a broad semiconductor lift. But Intel's one-month gain of 50% dwarfs the group.
The next major checkpoint is the July 23 earnings release — the key question is whether the Street begins to materially revise its consensus target upward before then, or whether the stock continues to run well ahead of institutional price expectations.
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