Tapestry heads into the week with an unusual split: short sellers have been quietly rebuilding positions while the stock climbs to $145.62, up 5% on the week and 9% over the past month.
The short-side story is the week's clearest tension. Short interest has risen roughly 32% over the past month to 8% of the free float — a meaningful level for a luxury goods name — and jumped sharply on June 5 before pulling back slightly to 16.4 million shares by June 9. That one-day spike on June 5 coincided with utilization briefly hitting its 52-week high. The borrow market itself is not strained: availability is exceptionally loose at over 4,200% of short interest, meaning there are more than forty shares available to borrow for every one currently shorted. Cost to borrow has also eased — falling 26% on the week to just 0.40% — reinforcing that this is a deliberate positioning shift rather than a mechanically driven squeeze. The ORTEX short score nudged up to 58.7 on June 5 before settling back near 52, suggesting last week's spike was a single-day event rather than the start of a sustained bear build. Options tell a calmer story: the put/call ratio of 0.67 is only modestly above its 20-day average of 0.62, well inside normal territory and far below the 1.05–1.08 readings that briefly flashed in early May.
The Street, meanwhile, is broadly constructive — and more so since earnings. After the May 7 print, UBS upgraded to Buy and lifted its target from $142 to $187, while JP Morgan raised its Overweight target to $200. Those moves, combined with a fresh BTIG reiteration of Buy at $180 filed this morning, put the consensus firmly in bull camp. The mean target of $164 implies roughly 13% upside from current levels, though JP Morgan's $200 marks the high-water mark. Factor scores lean the same way: EPS momentum over both 30-day and 90-day windows ranks in the 88th-to-90th percentile, and the analyst recommendation differential scores in the 95th percentile — near the very top of the universe. The EV/EBITDA of 15.5x and P/E of 19.9x have both expanded about 10% over the past month as the stock re-rated higher, yet remain modest by sector standards. The bear case centres on Kate Spade's uncertain return to profitable growth and the risk that Coach's premium positioning loses traction if North American or Chinese consumer spending weakens further.
Insider activity cuts against the bullish analyst consensus. Both the company CEO, Joanne Crevoiserat, and Coach division CEO Todd Kahn sold stock in May. Crevoiserat offloaded shares in four transactions around $132.88–$132.90 on May 13, netting roughly $8.8 million; Kahn followed with two sales at $140.02 on May 26, totalling about $8 million. Net insider activity over the past 90 days is a positive 124,000 shares, but that figure is driven by option-related mechanics rather than open-market buying — the recent cash disposals by two senior executives at prices well below where the stock trades today are worth noting.
The last earnings print is part of the backdrop here. On May 7, TPR fell 10.3% on the day and extended that to a 12.5% loss over the following week — a sharp reaction that helps explain why short interest was building into and through that event. The next results are due August 13. Closest peer RL had a strong week, up 7.6% and moving more decisively than Tapestry's 5% gain, while LEVI added 3.1% and VFC rose 1.8%, suggesting the broader apparel group is catching a bid but with TPR lagging Ralph Lauren's momentum.
The setup heading toward August 13 is therefore a stock caught between a rebuilding short base and a bullish analyst consensus, with the borrow market too loose to force any near-term resolution — what shifts the balance is whether the Kate Spade narrative firms up or the next print repeats May's pattern.
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