HP Inc. now trades at $25.49 — another 4.3% higher on Wednesday — yet short sellers who ignored Tuesday's print are still sitting on 12.6% of the free float.
The contradiction at the heart of this setup has deepened overnight. Short interest has barely moved from the ~117 million shares that bore witness to the entire 21% weekly surge. Up roughly 6.5% over the past month, the short position has actually grown into the rally rather than retreating from it. Bears have now had multiple sessions at multi-month highs to reconsider and have not blinked. That level of conviction at 12.6% of the float — with days to cover at 7.15 — means any forced unwind would be a significant market event. The borrow market, however, gives no sign of stress: cost to borrow sits near 0.45%, and availability is ample at roughly 300%, meaning lenders are not rationing supply and there is no mechanical squeeze pressure building.
Options traders are telling a different story from the shorts. The put/call ratio has eased to 0.90, running well below its 20-day average of 0.94 and sitting 1.4 standard deviations below that mean. That is a more constructive posture than the stock has seen for most of the past month — call demand is outpacing puts heading into the Q2 print. The read: options market participants, unlike short sellers, have shifted their weight to the upside. That divergence between the two positioning signals is the clearest tension going into tonight's release.
The analyst consensus adds a third, dissonant voice. The Street mean target is $19.87 — well below the current price of $25.49, a gap of nearly 22%. Morgan Stanley's Erik Woodring raised his target to $17 last week while maintaining an Underweight — a marginal upgrade that barely dents a deeply sceptical rating. The broader analyst cluster remains positioned against the stock. Goldman Sachs, Barclays, and Wells Fargo all cut targets following February's prior earnings report, with several settling in the $16–$20 range. The stock has since blown through all of those targets on the upside. Bulls focused on sector re-rating momentum and trade-deal tailwinds can point to the price; bears can point to every analyst note on the tape.
The Q2 print is therefore less a debate about whether HP's hardware end markets are stabilising and more about whether the numbers can justify a stock that has outrun the entire analyst consensus — and whether that finally forces the short community's hand.
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