HPQ heads into its May 29 earnings print with short sellers adding meaningfully and the Street sitting firmly in the bearish camp.
Short interest has climbed sharply this month, with SI % FF reaching 12.8% — up roughly 8.5% on the week and nearly 10% over the past month. The pace of that build is notable. From early April through April 22, short interest ran in the 12%–12.2% range. Then it jumped again, pushing to a 30-day high near 13.1% on April 28. That acceleration represents a clear shift in conviction among borrowers, not just noise. The ORTEX short score reinforces the picture, coming in at 64.5 — elevated and trending higher from the mid-61 range just two weeks ago.
The lending market does not suggest a squeeze in the making, however. Cost to borrow has eased about 12% on the week to just 0.41% annually — a very cheap print. Availability is running at roughly 26% of short interest, near its 52-week high, meaning there remains meaningful lending supply relative to current positions. Options traders are also measured rather than alarmed. The put/call ratio is 0.98, barely a third of a standard deviation above its 20-day average of 0.97. That is nowhere near the defensive spikes of 1.05–1.13 seen in mid-to-late April. The overall positioning setup reads as deliberate short-side rebuilding, not a panicked rush for protection.
The Street is broadly aligned with the bear case. The consensus is a hold, with seven analysts holding that rating — but recent actions point more decisively downward. Following the February earnings release, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley both cut their targets to $16, while Barclays, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America also lowered targets or downgraded outright. BofA moved to Underperform in early February. With the stock now trading at $20.14, it sits above every major sell-side target from that cluster of cuts — a gap that helps explain why short interest has been rebuilding as the price has recovered from its post-earnings lows. The EV/EBITDA multiple has edged up to 5.8x, and the P/E hovers near 6.9x, modest in absolute terms but consistent with a business where forward EPS momentum is flagging: the 30-day EPS momentum factor ranks in the 23rd percentile, and the 90-day reading sits even lower at the 13th.
Insider activity has not offered a meaningful counterweight. The only notable open-market transaction in recent months was a $834k sale by an independent director in mid-March at $18.47. Net insider value over 90 days runs at less than $843k in aggregate, dominated by stock awards and small sell-to-cover moves. BlackRock added over 10 million shares in Q1 per the latest institutional data, a meaningful addition, but the passive and index nature of most top holders — Vanguard at 14.4%, BlackRock at 10.9% — limits the read-through for active directional intent.
On earnings reactions, the last three prints show a mild positive bias in the day-following move — the April 2026 report saw a +3.4% next-day gain, while the two February events each saw a small negative on day one before recovering to positive five-day returns of 3.4%–3.6%. The immediate-day response has been modest in both directions. With the next report set for May 29, the question heading into that print is less about a single number and more about whether PC and printing hardware demand trajectories can justify a stock that has recovered above what most of the Street considers fair value.
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