TRI has spent the past month giving back ground — down nearly 10% over 30 days to CAD 114.87 — while its controlling shareholder quietly trims its enormous stake, and the stock's short score eases back from recent highs.
The insider angle is the most compelling thread this week. Woodbridge Company, which controls roughly 70% of Thomson Reuters, sold 200,000 shares across two consecutive days in late May — 100,000 on May 27 and another 100,000 on May 28 — at prices between CAD 83 and CAD 85. Combined, the two transactions totalled over USD 16.7 million. Woodbridge has been a steady seller in 2026, having also moved 65,000 shares in March at around CAD 127. The pattern is not panic — Woodbridge remains the dominant owner with 307 million shares — but a controlling shareholder consistently selling into a declining price is a signal institutional investors will notice, particularly as the stock is now trading well below those March exit levels.
The lending market reflects very little concern. Borrow availability is loose at roughly 337% — meaning lenders hold more than three shares available to borrow for every share already on loan — and has actually eased significantly over the past week, rising from around 229% last Monday. Short interest itself is modest at just under 0.8% of the free float, though it did step up about 6.6% on the week after a period of flat-lining around 3.3 million shares. Cost to borrow has edged higher week-on-week to 0.91%, but it peaked sharply at over 20% on May 20 before collapsing — likely a technical lending-pool anomaly rather than a genuine squeeze signal. Nothing in the borrow market today suggests short sellers are building an aggressive thesis here.
The valuation picture hints at why some investors are stepping back. The P/E has compressed about 7% over 30 days and now runs at roughly 17.5x. EV/EBITDA has eased to around 11.2x, also drifting lower over the month. These are not alarming levels for a high-quality information services business, but they come alongside factor scores that are mixed at best: EPS momentum ranks in the 29th percentile over 30 days, and EPS surprise is in the 36th. The dividend score is a standout at the 94th percentile, and a special cash distribution of USD 1.44 was announced in early May, so income investors have reason to stay constructive. The short score has pulled back to 40.3 from 45 earlier in June — a mild de-escalation, placing TRI in a relatively neutral zone.
Peer behaviour adds texture to TRI's underperformance. VRSK rose nearly 2% on the week while CLVT dropped close to 10% — suggesting the information-services group is trading on diverging stock-specific stories rather than sector-wide pressure. EXLS and G were broadly flat. TRI sits somewhere in the middle of that spread, with its own idiosyncratic drag from the Woodbridge selling programme and the post-earnings hangover. The most recent earnings print on May 5 produced a -3.6% next-day move and a -8.4% five-day drift — a reaction history that will be fresh in investors' minds ahead of the next scheduled result on August 4.
The key thing to watch into the summer is whether Woodbridge's selling programme continues at current prices — and whether a gap between the controlling shareholder's revealed exit levels and today's market price starts to attract a different kind of buyer.
See the live data behind this article on ORTEX.
Open TRI on ORTEX →ORTEX Market Intelligence content is generated by AI from a snapshot of ORTEX's proprietary data. Content is informational only and does not constitute investment advice.
