CPRI reports again on May 29 — and the positioning picture is almost identical to where it stood 48 hours ago, when the previous earnings preview ran.
Short sellers are still retreating, not pressing. Short interest has edged down another 3% in a single session to 8.9% of the free float, extending a month-long unwind that has now trimmed roughly 13% off the position. The short base peaked above 12.2 million shares in mid-April; it now stands at 10.6 million. That is a meaningful reduction, and it reads as covering into the print rather than conviction either way. The lending market adds nothing to the bear case: availability is extraordinarily loose at 1,699% of short interest, with around 76 million shares available to borrow against the 10.6 million currently lent out. Cost to borrow is a negligible 0.40%. Options confirm the calm — the put/call ratio has dropped to 0.13, a new 52-week low and well below its 20-day average of 0.15. There is no hedging pressure whatsoever in the options market.
The bull-bear divide is sharper than the positioning suggests. Bulls point to Capri's divestiture of Versace, the resulting debt reduction, and pockets of genuine strength in accessories — the Bon Bon and Cinch collections have shown commercial momentum. Bears see a harder picture: tariff impacts running above earlier expectations, Michael Kors and Jimmy Choo both posting declining sales, and gross margins under pressure. Analyst consensus lands at a mean target of $26.41 against a current price of $18.27 — roughly 45% implied upside — though that average masks real divergence. JP Morgan carries an Overweight with a $31 target after lifting it in April. Barclays cut its target from $32 to $24 in early April while keeping Overweight. Goldman Sachs sits at Neutral with a $24 target. The Street is neither abandoning the stock nor willing to chase it.
One signal worth noting: CEO John Idol bought 55,000 shares in March at $17.98, just below where the stock trades today. That purchase is now underwater by less than 2%, and the stock has given back 11% over the past month despite a modest 2.4% bounce this week. Peers have moved more decisively — RL and PVH are each up more than 17% on the week, while LEVI has gained nearly 10%. CPRI's relative underperformance against that backdrop underscores the market's ambivalence about whether the brand restructuring story is turning.
Tomorrow's print is less a test of whether Capri can grow and more a test of whether the tariff drag, margin contraction, and Michael Kors repositioning are progressing on a credible timeline — or deepening into a structural problem.
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