Movado Group heads into its fiscal Q1 2026 earnings report — due Thursday morning — having posted its best weekly gain in months, with short sellers doing little to fight the move.
The stock climbed 13.1% on the week to close at $29.82, with Wednesday alone adding 4.8%. The rally puts MOV back above most analyst price targets and within 11% of the lone active Buy rating on the name. The timing is notable: earnings land tomorrow before the open, and the tape is telling a different story to the fundamental backdrop, which remains genuinely soft.
The lending market is almost indifferent to the excitement. Availability is extremely loose at roughly 3,131% of short interest — meaning lenders hold more than 31 times the amount currently borrowed — confirming there is no supply squeeze anywhere near this name. Short interest has crept up about 20% over the past month to 3.9% of the float, a meaningful pace, but still a modest absolute level. Borrowing costs confirm it: at 0.59%, the cost to borrow has risen 27% on the week but remains trivially cheap in absolute terms. Options positioning is also calm — the put/call ratio of 0.12 barely moved above its 20-day average, with a z-score well under 1. Whatever is driving this rally, it is not a short squeeze and it is not options-driven fear.
The Street is thin and stale on coverage. The only active voice is BWS Financial, which has sat on a Buy and a $31.50 target since initiating in early 2025, last reiterating in March. That target, at a stock now trading at $29.82, implies barely 5% upside at current prices — the rally has all but closed the gap. A Benchmark Buy at $41.00 sits in the records but has not been updated since mid-2024 and should be treated as stale. On valuation, the numbers are hard to love: price-to-book is below 0.63 and EV/EBITDA is in the single digits on a trailing basis, which on the surface looks cheap — but the most recent quarter showed revenue slipping 1.9% year-on-year, operating income of just $291,000 on $131.8 million in sales, and operating cash outflow of $7.2 million. The gross margin at 54% is healthy, but SG&A is consuming nearly every dollar of it. The bear case — eroding discretionary spending, margin pressure, and revenue decline — is actively playing out in the numbers.
One ownership note is worth flagging. CEO Efraim Grinberg sold $2.2 million of stock on April 16, at $27.08 per share. That sale came alongside coordinated disposals from the CFO, General Counsel, CTO, and HR Director — all on March 27 at $24.05. Cluster selling from this many executives in the same week, at prices well below where the stock trades today, reads less as conviction against the company and more as routine post-vesting activity, but the direction of travel is unanimous. The Grinberg family still controls a combined 26% of shares outstanding, so insider alignment remains structural even as the selling continues.
Among correlated peers, the week's mood was broadly constructive: RL gained 17.2%, PVH rose 17.5%, COLM added 11.2%, and LEVI climbed 9.9%. MOV's 13.1% move is squarely in that pack rather than standing apart — the rally looks more like sector beta than a stock-specific re-rating. The outlier in the peer group was VFC, essentially flat on the week at -1.1%, suggesting the move is selective even within apparel.
With results due tomorrow, the key question is whether the Q1 print shows any inflection in revenue or operating leverage. The last result, reported in March, saw a negligible 1-day stock move of -0.9%. The quarter before that produced a 5-day drift of -2.1%. The market has historically shrugged at these events. Given the stock's 13% run into the print, a miss on operating income — which has almost no margin for error — could test how much of that move holds.
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