One of 147: Lamb Weston's Lone Tracked Holder Added 43.6%, the Activist Bought 386,000 Shares, and BlackRock Prints 11.8%

GetCoattail Research — The Filing Tape #167. Lamb Weston was the most-viewed stock on MarketCrunch's Trending Stocks page on October 23, 2026, two and a half weeks after it beat quarterly estimates and raised full-year guidance. The filings show one tracked holder of 147, up 43.6% on a verified count; an insider record with 11 buys against a single sale; an activist group still on the 5% register after trimming below 5%; BlackRock's 11.8% print from March 2026; and a borrow at 4.83% that sits 35.8% below its series maximum.

The Hype

The attention is view traffic on a frozen-potato name two and a half weeks past an earnings beat. MarketCrunch's "Trending Stocks Right Now" page showed Lamb Weston Holdings, Inc. (LW) as the most-viewed stock on October 23, 2026, ahead of MKTX and COF in its views table. MarketCrunch, October 23, 2026 The primary hook behind the attention is the October 6 fiscal first-quarter report: adjusted earnings of $0.75 a share beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $0.59, net sales of $1,670.3 million beat the $1,654 million consensus, and management raised fiscal 2027 guidance across the board — net sales to low-single-digit growth from a $6.5 billion adjusted base (from flat to 1%), adjusted EBITDA to $1.125–$1.215 billion (from $1.10–$1.20 billion), and adjusted EPS to $3.05–$3.35 (from $2.95–$3.25). Zacks, October 6, 2026 The quarter's two halves went opposite ways: North America sales rose 5.2% on 6.7% volume growth, its seventh straight quarter of volume gains, with segment adjusted EBITDA up 11%; International sales fell 8% with segment adjusted EBITDA down 54%. Margins compressed — adjusted gross margin down 140 basis points to 19%, adjusted EBITDA down 5.5% year over year — and Zacks keeps the name at Rank #3 (Hold), noting shares gained 2.6% in the prior three months against a 7.1% industry decline. Our own price file, which ends October 2, shows the longer arc: the stock is up 4.1% year to date but sits 34.5% below its 252-day high close of $66.57 (October 27, 2025).

The Tape

For Lamb Weston, the one hundred and sixty-seventh Filing Tape audit, the tape shows one tracked manager of 147 adding 43.6% on a verified count, a full market that added 16,615,986 shares across 562 filers, an insider record with eleven buys against one sale and the activist among the buyers, no congressional row anywhere, a 5% register that holds both an activist group and a fresh BlackRock 11.8% print, and a borrow at 4.83% of shares that has fallen more than a third from its series maximum.

Lens 1 — the superinvestors: one holder, up 43.6%, and nearly nothing else to say. The collection holds 147 managers (144 at June 30; 3 early filers at September 30). The June 30, 2026 register is one distinct manager — Tweedy Browne — holding 37,275 shares worth $1,609,535, long only, at a 0.12% weight, labelled INCREASED at +43.6%. The label verifies under both pairing methods: the June filing pairs to a unique March filing whose row for this CUSIP holds 25,960 shares, and +43.6% recomputes exactly. There are no NEW labels, no exits, and none of the three September early filers holds the name. The June cohort's implied price is $43.18, exactly the June 30 close. At 0.03% of reported institutional shares, the tracked record says one value manager added in Q2, and says nothing else. 13F figures are as of June 30, 2026, published up to 45 days later.

Lens 2 — institutions: three more filers, 16.6 million more shares. At June 30, 2026, 562 institutions reported positions on the name's single CUSIP, up 3 from 559 at March 31 (+0.54%); 555 are long. Reported shares rose 14.68% to 129,836,426 (+16,615,986 shares), while reported value rose 17.99% to $5,295,145,939, labelled "reported" because the aggregate includes option rows (methodology). The aggregate implies $40.78 against the $43.18 close (−5.55%). The share count is the cleaner measure: a seventh more stock reported with barely any change in filer count, in a quarter when the price rose 2.2%.

Lens 3 — insiders: eleven buys, one sale, and the activist on the buy side of the Form 4 tape. The parsed Form 4 record holds 92 filings (January 13, 2025 – August 5, 2026). The last 90 days hold 23 filings but no P- or S-coded rows at all — their non-derivative rows carry acquisition and tax-withholding codes only. The last year holds 10 purchase-coded rows totalling 458,056 shares and $19,415,600.60 against 1 sale-coded row of 1,600 shares and $99,973.12, net +456,456 shares. The buyers: JANA Partners Management, LP — the activist on the 5% register — bought 386,000 shares in 4 rows for $16,073,540.00; officers bought too (Jan Eli B. Craps 50,000 shares and James D. Gray 14,556 shares across 4 officer rows, $3,041,335.60 in all), with Peter J. Bensen (5,000) and Norman Prestage (2,500) rounding out the five buyers. The single sale is Gregory W. Jones, VP and Controller, 1,600 shares at $62.48 filed October 3, 2025. One more purchase sits outside the year (Robert A. Niblock, 3,000 shares, January 2025), for 11 buys and 1 sale in all; the last P- or S-coded row anywhere on the record is May 11, 2026. The implied buy prices ($42.39, $42.51) and the implied sale price ($62.48) each sit inside their filing-window close ranges. The site's insider aggregate (October 23, 2026, 90-day window) carries no row for this name — consistent with the full parse's empty 90-day P/S window, not a contradiction.

Lens 4 — Congress: nothing. The combined aggregate (as of October 3, 2026), the House aggregate and the Senate aggregate (as of October 1, 2026) each carry no row for this ticker, and neither the House nor the Senate member file carries a row. The lens has data but no signal — 0 buys, 0 sells, nowhere.

Lens 5 — the 5% register: an activist group and the largest print is dated March 2026. Our full parse holds 25 SC 13D/G filings — 12 SC 13D/A, 8 SC 13G/A and 5 original SC 13G (20 amendments), carrying 82 reporter rows from 28 reporting names. The register maximum as printed is BlackRock, Inc., 16,348,630 shares and 11.8%, in an SC 13G/A filed April 7, 2026 as of March 31, 2026 — 11.87% of our measured share count, so the print and the count sit in the same range, and the print is dated this year. The activist group: JANA Partners Management, LP printed 7,985,426 shares and 5.6% (SC 13D/A, event March 31, 2025), then 6,957,519 shares and 4.9% (SC 13D/A, event June 30, 2025) — below the 5% line in print while still on the register — with Continental Grain Co and Paul J. Fribourg printing a separate 2,134,080 shares and 1.5% in the same period, a separate group print rather than a combined stake. The freshest filing on the register is JPMorgan Chase & Co., 6,889,942 shares and 4.9% (SC 13G/A filed August 5, 2026, as of June 30, 2026). Other passive prints: T. Rowe Price Associates at 7.1% (9,824,721 shares, as of December 31, 2025), and The Vanguard Group printing 0 shares and 0.0% as of March 13, 2026. The register's cross-date share total of 196,030,331.62 is an arithmetic sum of 82 reporter rows across different reporters and as-of dates — including the same FMR position printed by both the fund and its control person — and is not a current combined stake.

Lens 6 — short interest: 4.83% of a measured share count, more than a third below its peak. The latest FINRA settlement, September 15, 2026, records 6,659,809 shares sold short at 5.08 days to cover, 4.83% of the share count in our fundamentals file (a measured period-end count, methodology). The borrow rose 5.8% against the prior settlement; it sits 6.7% below the June 30, 2026 settlement, 35.8% below the series maximum (10,371,626, Feb 28, 2025), and 45.7% above the year-ago settlement. The series minimum is 1,618,198 shares at May 13, 2022. The summer's path: 7,135,677 (June 30), 6,800,411 (July 15), 6,516,764 (July 31), 5,874,062 (August 14), 6,294,922 (August 31), 6,659,809 (September 15).

The Gap

The search story is a post-earnings attention spike: a beat-and-raise quarter, North America volume growing for the seventh straight quarter, and the most-viewed stock on a trending page two and a half weeks later. The filings underneath are thinner in the place this series watches first. Of the 147 tracked managers, exactly one holds the name — Tweedy Browne, up a verified 43.6% but just 0.03% of reported institutional shares — so the tracked record is nearly silent on the stock the market is now reading most. The broader market is not silent: 562 institutions reported 14.68% more shares in Q2. The insider record leans buy-side at every horizon — 11 buys against 1 sale, officers and the activist both buying, nothing P- or S-coded since May 11, 2026. The activist register tells a mixed story: JANA bought 386,000 shares in P-coded Form 4 rows over the last year while its SC 13D print stepped down from 5.6% to 4.9%, and the borrow sits 35.8% below its series maximum even as it rebuilt 45.7% year over year. Congress has recorded nothing anywhere. One plausible reading is that the October attention is an earnings-revision argument about a post-earnings name, while the record shows institutions adding shares, insiders net buying, an activist still present but printing below 5%, and shorts who covered most of the 2025 build and have started rebuilding — with the tracked superinvestor lens contributing almost nothing to either side because it barely holds the name.

What Would Change the Picture

Nothing above is a recommendation. These filings would change it:

• 1. The 2026Q3 13F season (filing window closing mid-November 2026). The baseline is one June holder with 37,275 shares and a verified +43.6%, zero new positions, zero exits, and zero September early filers holding the name. Whether Tweedy Browne adds again — and whether any second tracked manager appears at all — would change this lens, because the current reading is that the tracked cohort barely exists here.
• 2. A new SC 13D/A amendment, or a new SC 13D filer. The baseline is JANA at a printed 4.9% (below the 5% line) and Continental Grain at 1.5%, with the freshest passive print BlackRock at 11.8% as of March 31, 2026. A new amendment printing JANA back above 5%, or an original SC 13D from any reporter, would change this lens.
• 3. A P-coded insider row after May 11, 2026 — or an officer sale. The parsed record through the October 2 window end holds 11 buys and 1 sale, with the last P- or S-coded row dated May 11, 2026. A new purchase-coded row would extend the buy-side record; an officer sale materially larger than Jones's 1,600-share sale would change its shape.
• 4. A first congressional trade. No aggregate or member file carries a row for this ticker. Any recorded House or Senate trade would change this lens from blank to signal.
• 5. Short interest above 10,371,626 shares, or below 5,874,062. Above the February 28, 2025 settlement would set a new series high; below the August 14, 2026 settlement would unwind the post-June rebuild.

Methodology and data notes

• As-of & limits: The lenses rest on different clocks, none live: 13F is a June 30, 2026 snapshot published up to 45 days later; Form 4 windows run through October 2, 2026 (the last LW filing in the parsed record is itself dated August 5, 2026); Congress aggregates run through October 3, 2026 (Senate through October 1, 2026); 13D/G through August 5, 2026; short interest through September 15, 2026; the price file ends October 2, 2026. Nine limits are specific to this audit. First, the roster counts are not comparable to earlier pieces' figures — this audit uses the 147-filer collection (149 managers, 147 with CIKs and filings) and the "of 147" denominator comes from that collection's summary, not from a hardcoded constant. Second, this name's common stock carries a single CUSIP (513272104), and the full-market by-CUSIP row matches the by-ticker aggregate on every field — holders, long holders, shares, reported value, prior holders and prior reported value — so no CUSIP blending question arises. Third, the tracked register's single change label is verified, not taken on trust: Tweedy Browne's INCREASED +43.6% was verified by two methods that agree exactly — a total-value prefix pass and accession identity plus CUSIP-overlap pairing, the June filing pairing to a unique March filing, with the label recomputing exactly and no fallback lookup needed. The registers then reconcile with no remainder: the March 31 register holds 25,960 shares, equal to the verified continuing position; the June 30 register holds 37,275 shares, equal to the June cohort. There are no NEW labels, no exits, and no September early filer holding this name, so the register reconciliation is a single holder's arithmetic. Fourth, implied prices are exact on the tracked side: the June cohort implies $43.18 against the June 30 close of $43.18 (0.00%). Fifth, the full-market aggregate implies $40.78 against the June 30 close of $43.18 (−5.55%): the aggregate is a reported sum that includes option rows, so its implied price need not equal the close; this audit uses filer counts and share counts as this lens's primary measures and reports the value as reported only. Sixth, the insider lens rests on a single aggregate bucket — this issuer's filings sit under one symbol spelling, "LW", with no case split — cross-checked against a row-level scan of all 92 parsed filings for the issuer (CIK 1679273): filing counts, transaction counts, share counts, officer-row counts and values reproduce exactly in every window, with a value difference of $0.00 in all three windows and no accession appearing under more than one symbol spelling. The 23 filings in the 90-day window carry no P- or S-coded rows — their non-derivative rows are acquisition and tax-withholding codes — so no implied-price check applies there; the one-year and full-record windows hold 10 and 11 purchase rows and one sale row, and the implied buy prices ($42.39 and $42.51) and the implied sale price ($62.48) each sit inside their filing-window close ranges. The site's insider aggregate (dated October 23, 2026, a 90-day window ending that day) carries no row for this name, which is consistent with the full parse's 90-day window holding no P- or S-coded rows rather than a contradiction of it; this audit uses the full parse, whose window is defined in the aggregate file itself. Form 4 windows in this audit are filing-date windows; the sale row was filed October 3, 2025 and the last purchase-coded row was filed May 11, 2026. Seventh, the congressional lens is reported across five files: the combined aggregate, the House aggregate, the Senate aggregate, the House member file (transactions dated on or after April 1, 2026) and the raw Senate PTR records filtered to the same window — all carry no row for this ticker, so this lens is reported as blank from data that exists, not from missing data. Eighth, the 5% register's maximum print needs its date in full: the BlackRock SC 13G/A (filed April 7, 2026) prints 16,348,630 shares at 11.8% as of March 31, 2026, and that share count is 11.87% of the 137,780,447 shares in our fundamentals file, so on this name the printed percentage and the share count are in the same range and no mismatch flag applies. The register's cross-date share total of 196,030,331.62 is likewise an arithmetic sum of 82 reporter rows across different reporters and as-of dates, including the same FMR position printed by both the fund and its control person and the activist group prints at different dates, and is not a current combined stake; each print is reported individually in the text. Parsed totals match the aggregates exactly, 20 of the 25 filings on this register are amendments and 5 are original SC 13G filings, and the activist prints are reported as the reporters printed them — JANA and Continental Grain file as separate groups, not one combined stake. Ninth, the short-interest series is long by construction: it holds 137 settlements from January 15, 2021 through September 15, 2026. Within it, no settlement steps to 2x or more of the prior settlement and none steps to one-half or less (the largest step is 1.912x, at April 15, 2024; the smallest is 0.547x, at December 15, 2021), so the series carries no discontinuity on this measure. No row carries a split flag; two rows carry a FINRA revision flag (June 15, 2021 and May 31, 2023). The issuer-name field reads "Lamb Weston Holdings, Inc." at all 137 settlements, on a single market class (NYSE) throughout. The share count behind the short-interest percentage is 137,780,447 shares in our fundamentals file, and unlike a weighted-average fallback it is a measured count (the file's shares_source reads dei/EntityCommonStockSharesOutstanding and its shares_end reads "2026-09-29"), so the 4.83% figure rests on that measured denominator. Our price file records no single-day close move across the thresholds this audit normally treats as split patterns, and records no split factor for this name. The company's fundamentals as collected print fiscal 2026 revenue of $6,612,300,000, net income of $290,000,000 and assets of $7,380,100,000; those figures are reported as collected and are not used in any lens above. Every price statement from our own file is mechanical, a date and a close. The MarketCrunch ranking and the Zacks figures in The Hype — the most-viewed ranking, the quarterly results, the guidance revisions and the Zacks Rank — are those outlets' published figures, cited as such, not blended into file-based calculations.
• Market context sources: MarketCrunch, October 23, 2026 (LW most-viewed on the "Trending Stocks Right Now" page, ahead of MKTX and COF — the selection basis for this audit, as recorded by the run's selection step). Zacks, October 6, 2026 (fiscal Q1 2027: adjusted EPS $0.75 vs $0.59 consensus, up 1.4% year over year; net sales $1,670.3 million vs $1,654 million consensus, up 0.7%; volume +2%, price/mix −2%; North America sales +5.2% to $1,141.4 million on 6.7% volume growth, seventh straight quarter of volume gains, segment adjusted EBITDA +11% to $287.3 million; International sales −8% to $528.9 million, segment adjusted EBITDA −54% to $26.5 million; adjusted gross profit −6.5% to $316.8 million, margin −140 bps to 19%; adjusted EBITDA −5.5% to $285.6 million, margin −110 bps to 17.1%; fiscal 2027 guidance raised to net sales up a low-single-digit percentage from a $6.5 billion adjusted base, adjusted EBITDA $1.125–$1.215 billion, adjusted EPS $3.05–$3.35, capex $380–$410 million; quarterly dividend $0.38 payable December 4 to holders of record November 6; Zacks Rank #3 (Hold); shares +2.6% in the prior three months against a 7.1% industry decline). Zacks, October 6, 2026 (Lamb Weston shares up about 6.4% year to date against the S&P 500's 13.6%; earnings surprise +27.12%; four straight quarterly EPS beats). Zacks Research, October 16, 2026 (Q4 fiscal 2027 estimate cut to $0.75 from $0.77; Strong-Buy rating on the stock). Figures we could not confirm were left out; the external items above are reported figures from those outlets, not GetCoattail measurements.
• Lamb Weston is in the GetCoattail stock-page universe: Lamb Weston (LW) stock page. Series data: lw_lens_data.csv · lw_short_interest_series.csv. Earlier audits: ConocoPhillips · Zoom.

Past patterns are not a promise of future results. For education only — not investment advice.

This article describes public filings as of the dates stated. It is not investment advice and makes no recommendation. Filings lag reality: 13F positions are as of June 30, 2026, and later trading is not yet public.

Revision history: v1.0 — October 23, 2026: first publication.