TCL.A enters May with short sellers rebuilding positions at a pace not seen this year — while company directors quietly accumulate shares at multi-year lows.
Short interest has climbed sharply over the past month, and the speed of that move is the week's defining tension. The float short reading hit 5.3% on April 28, up from 3.9% a month ago — a 32% increase in estimated shares short over 30 days. The most striking step change came around April 21, when short positions jumped roughly a full percentage point of the float almost overnight, and have held near those levels since. That puts short interest at its highest point in the trailing six-week window, on a stock that has already lost more than 2% on the week and sits at CAD 5.15.
The borrow market tells a more complicated story. Cost to borrow peaked at an extraordinary 26% in late March, briefly signalling intense demand for shares to short. It has since normalised dramatically — down to under 1% — suggesting that episode was transient, likely related to the special dividend mechanics in March rather than a structural squeeze on supply. Availability is correspondingly loose now, with borrow utilisation running at just 8% against a 52-week peak of 15%. The short score of 49.2 sits almost exactly at the midpoint of the ORTEX 0-100 scale, consistent with building but not yet extreme positioning.
Against that backdrop, two directors have been buying. Jacynthe Cote picked up 14,300 shares on April 22 at roughly CAD 5.33. Serge Boulanger added 27,000 shares in two tranches on March 25 at around CAD 5.07. Neither purchase is large in absolute dollar terms — each sits below CAD 100,000 equivalent — but the pattern is notable: two board members stepping in at the current depressed price level within weeks of each other. The net insider position over 90 days is positive, at a net ~773,000 shares acquired when combining buys and awards.
On fundamentals, the valuation picture is genuinely cheap for a company of this profile. The EV/EBITDA multiple runs at 5.75x, and the price-to-earnings multiple is below 4.7x. The EV/EBIT factor score ranks in the 97th percentile — meaning Transcontinental trades cheaper on an earnings-power basis than almost every comparable in the ORTEX universe. The dividend score ranks in the 96th percentile as well, though investors should note the March 2026 special dividends were exceptional events likely tied to corporate restructuring activity, rather than signals of an ongoing elevated payout. The company's acquisitions of PDI Group and the Phipps Dickson Integria Group this spring show a management team still investing for growth in in-store marketing, even as the broader packaging M&A environment faces macro headwinds.
Institutional ownership is highly concentrated. QV Investors holds 11.4% of shares and added nearly 3.9 million shares in the most recent reporting period — the largest single holder move in the register. Finda Oy, a Finnish holding company, reported a new 11.1% stake as of mid-March. Together with Capinabel's 10.4%, three holders account for roughly a third of the company. That concentration means thin liquidity for anyone trying to build or unwind a large position quickly, which partially explains the sensitivity to short-selling flows even at relatively moderate short interest levels.
The next earnings event is June 3. The most recent print in March produced a muted single-day move of just -0.17%, with a symmetric five-day recovery. With shorts now running near recent highs and directors having bought into weakness, the June print is less a question of whether earnings disappoint and more a question of whether the narrative around the packaging business — and the new acquisitions — can shift sentiment in a market that has been quietly adding to the short side all month.
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