LG Display has just posted its sharpest weekly gain in years — up 23% in seven days to ₩15,630 — yet the data tells a story of shorts retreating rather than a structural bull thesis emerging.
The week's central tension is this: the stock is recovering fast from an April earnings disaster, borrow costs are easing sharply, and the OLED capex cycle is showing early signs of life, while short interest remains sticky and upcoming Q2 results sit just two months away with the bar already set low.
The clearest driver this week is price momentum. The stock rose 23% over the past five sessions and is up 22% over the past month, recovering much of the ground lost after Q1 results on May 15 badly missed estimates — EPS of -$0.39 versus a -$0.22 consensus, with sales of $3.78 billion falling well short of the $4.97 billion estimate. That miss followed a brutal April 23 earnings reaction, when the stock fell more than 17% in a single session and extended losses to over 20% across the following week. The bounce since then is sharp, and news flow has turned incrementally more constructive: LG Display settled its patent dispute with Tianma this week, and separately selected Sunic System to supply sixth-generation OLED deposition equipment — a small but tangible signal that OLED investment is continuing.
Shorts are loosening their grip, though not rapidly. Short interest slipped to 3.8% of the free float from 4.1% at the start of the week, and it has tracked broadly sideways-to-lower since peaking near 4.1% in mid-May. The borrow market is easing in parallel: cost to borrow dropped 26% over the past week to 4.9%, down from a recent high of 6.8% in late May, back toward April levels. Availability has also opened up sharply — from around 164% a week ago to 219% now, well clear of the 52-week trough near 104% seen in mid-April when the borrow market was at its tightest. That loosening availability indicates growing supply of lendable shares relative to shorts outstanding. The ORTEX short score has retreated to 47.8, down from above 51 earlier in the month, reflecting a positioning setup that is gradually becoming less charged.
BlackRock stands out on the institutional side. The asset manager added 12.1 million shares as of April 30, lifting its stake to 5.3% of outstanding shares — a meaningful increase timed around the April sell-off. Parent company LG Electronics remains the dominant holder at 36.9% and has been static. Insider activity has been modest and skewed to sells: a Vice President disposed of small tranches around ₩15,370 in late April following stock award grants, while a Managing Director sold roughly 11,300 shares in early March near ₩16,000. Neither move is large enough relative to float to carry much signal, but the absence of insider buying at depressed levels is notable.
The valuation picture is recovering but not stretched. The stock's price-to-book ratio has risen 0.18x over the past week to just above 1.0x, and the P/E, at 12.2x, has expanded by roughly 2.3 turns over the same period — reflecting the price move directly. EV/EBITDA is running near 4x. The 12-month forward EPS growth factor scores in the 88th percentile, suggesting the Street expects meaningful profit recovery from here, though the EPS surprise score sits at just the 1st percentile after consecutive misses. That divergence — strong forward optimism, terrible recent delivery — frames the core bull-versus-bear debate. Analyst data is stale beyond the 14-day threshold, so no recent consensus change can be verified, and caution is warranted in reading the stated mean target of ₩14,540 against a current price of ₩15,630 given the age of those estimates.
Among correlated peers, Samsung SDI stands out most starkly — up 52% on the week and 17% in a single day, suggesting broad re-rating pressure across Korean display and battery-linked materials. Taiwanese peers 3312 and 2428 gained 14% and 21% respectively over the week, while 3357 slipped 3% on the day after posting a comparable weekly gain. The move in A034220 therefore looks consistent with a sector-level re-rating, not a stock-specific revaluation.
Q2 results are scheduled for July 23. With the Q1 miss still fresh and forward EPS estimates elevated relative to recent delivery, that date will test whether the current momentum can survive another look at the income statement.
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