GetCoattail Research — The Filing Tape #67. PPL is a regulated utility with a data-center story: a $23 billion capital plan, a 6–8% growth target, and a consensus target well above the price. The filings describe a thinner register: one tracked superinvestor, who arrived only last quarter, a broad market that added 127 million shares underneath, an insider record with no purchase in 166 filings, and a 5% register whose two biggest active chains were roughly halved.
The Hype
PPL Corporation runs regulated electric and gas utilities in Pennsylvania, Kentucky and Rhode Island — not an obvious social-media stock. Yet on AltIndex's meme-stock list, updated October 13, 2026, PPL drew 33 Reddit mentions in 24 hours, up 120%, with neutral sentiment — fifteenth on that list; every name above it is already covered here or was set aside for missing data. The narrative behind the attention is the utility version of the AI trade: management's plan calls for $23 billion of infrastructure investment through 2029 and long-term annual EPS growth of 6% to 8%, with expected data-center load part of the case. Second-quarter 2026 ongoing EPS was $0.33, a cent below consensus, on revenue of $2.11 billion, and the company reaffirmed full-year guidance of $1.90 to $1.98. Analysts lean positive: the MarketBeat consensus is a moderate buy, average target $40.21; Scotiabank upgraded the stock to strong buy on September 29, while Barclays kept an overweight rating on October 12 but lowered its target from $41 to $38. The price has not followed. On our daily-close file the stock fell 4.8% in the second quarter, from $38.20 at March 31 to $36.35 at June 30, and eased to $32.80 by October 2 — down 17.6% from its 252-session closing high of $39.81 on April 9, 2026, and down 6.3% year to date.
The Tape
For PPL — the sixty-seventh Filing Tape audit — the tape shows a tracked cohort that went from zero holders to one, a full market adding shares, an insider purchase line that has never printed, no congressional row, a passive 5% register stepping down, and a borrow easing off its July peak.
| Lens | As of | What the filings show | Direction vs prior period |
|---|---|---|---|
| Superinvestors (13F) | Jun 30, 2026 | 1 long holder; 1,349,987 shares; $49,072,027 | New holder vs Q1 (0 holders, 0 shares) |
| All institutions (13F) | Jun 30, 2026 | 1,034 filers; 679,978,198 shares | Filers +57; shares +23.07% |
| Insiders (Form 4) | Oct 2, 2026 | 0 purchases in the entire parsed record; 15 sales | Last 90 days: 0 purchases, 0 sales |
| Congress | Oct 3, 2026 | No PPL row in the combined, House or Senate aggregates | No trade recorded in coverage |
| 13D/G | Jul 31, 2026 | 8 parsed filings, all SC 13G; register maximum 7.31% (Vanguard Capital Management) | Franklin chain -51.4%; T. Rowe chain -48.7% |
| Short interest (FINRA) | Sep 15, 2026 | 35,490,948 shares; 4.72% of shares outstanding | -12.5% vs series peak; -5.05% vs prior settlement |
Lens 1 — the superinvestors: one holder, and it is new. We track 83 large, mostly long-only managers whose 13F portfolios we collect directly from SEC EDGAR. As of June 30, 2026, 1 held PPL long: John Rogers's Ariel Investments, with 1,349,987 shares worth $49,072,027, a 0.49% portfolio weight, labelled NEW, with no option rows. The quarter comparison comes from the pipeline's holdings files on the same CUSIP basis: at March 31 the cohort held no PPL row at all — 0 shares across 0 rows — so Ariel's position is an arrival, not an addition; the exit list contains no PPL row either. The position's implied price, $36.35, sits exactly on the June 30 close. One holder at a half-percent weight is a toe in the water, not a cohort verdict — but the tracked register's entire presence is this single new line. 13F figures are as of June 30, 2026; funds have up to 45 days to file, so this picture is complete — and always lagging.
Lens 2 — institutions: 57 more filers, 127.5 million more shares. At June 30, 2026, 1,034 institutions reported positions, up 57 from 977 at March 31 (+5.83%), 1,028 of them long. Reported shares rose 23.07%, from 552,515,743 to 679,978,198 shares — up 127,462,455 shares in a quarter when the price fell 4.8%. Reported aggregate value rose 15.27% to $23,293,389,127; the aggregate includes option rows, so we headline filer and share counts and label dollars "reported" (see methodology).
Lens 3 — insiders: no purchase in the entire parsed record. The parsed Form 4 record holds 166 filings through October 2, 2026. Across the whole record, purchases total 0 transactions — in every window, for officers and non-officers alike. Sales total 15 transactions totalling 71,523 shares and $2,476,475.98, by six sellers, all 15 of them officer sales. The last year holds 76 filings with a single sale — 7,051 shares for $250,733.56, by one seller — and the last 90 days hold 11 filings with no purchase and no sale at all. This record is mostly quiet rather than one-sided; what it has never contained, at any price in the file — including the $31.97 closing low of September 24, 2026 — is an insider paying market price for a share. We assign no motives.
Lens 4 — Congress: no row, in either chamber. The combined congressional record (as of October 3, 2026) carries no PPL row at all — and neither do the House aggregate (October 3, 2026) or the Senate aggregate (October 1, 2026).
Lens 5 — the 5% register: eight filings, all passive, and the active chains step down. Our full parse holds exactly 8 SC 13D/G filings for PPL — five SC 13G and three SC 13G/A, and no SC 13D filing of any kind — 12 reporting-person rows across 8 names as filed, most recently filed July 31, 2026, matching the site aggregate on every field. The register's maximum is Vanguard Capital Management at 54,981,572 shares (7.31%) as of March 31, 2026. The two largest chains that print twice both step down by roughly half: Franklin Resources, Inc. at 43,836,112 shares (5.8%) as of March 31, 2026, then 21,288,443 shares (2.8%) as of June 30, 2026 — down 22,547,669 shares (-51.4%); and T. Rowe Price Investment Management, Inc. at 40,357,717 shares (5.5%) as of December 31, 2025, then 20,715,906 shares (2.8%) as of March 31, 2026 — down 19,641,811 shares (-48.7%). State Street Corporation prints a single row, 37,376,575 shares (5.1%) as of June 30, 2025. The Vanguard Group prints 0 shares (0.0%) as of March 13, 2026, while Vanguard Capital Management and Vanguard Portfolio Management — the latter at 37,769,687 shares (5.02%) as of June 30, 2026 — print separate rows under their own names; we report them as filed and do not merge them.
Lens 6 — short interest: 35,490,948 shares, easing off the peak. As of September 15, 2026 — the most recent of 137 FINRA settlements since January 15, 2021 — 35,490,948 PPL shares were sold short, down 5.05% from the prior settlement's 37,379,443 shares on August 31, 2026. The series maximum is 40,541,845 shares on July 15, 2026 — verified by a maximum query over the whole series — so the latest sits 12.5% below that peak. The last five settlements read 40,541,845, 39,012,446, 36,670,619, 37,379,443 and 35,490,948: a decline with one uptick. Against the year-ago 33,525,032 shares the latest is up 5.9%; against the June 30, 2026 settlement of 37,269,757 shares it is down 4.8%. Against 752,350,362 shares outstanding, it is 4.72% of the share count, at 4.84 days to cover.
The Gap
The narrative describes a utility being re-rated as an AI-power supplier: a $23 billion build-out, a 6–8% growth target, a $40.21 consensus target against a $32.80 close, and mentions up 120% in a day. The filings describe one arrival against a broad, quiet reshuffle. The tracked superinvestors held no PPL at March 31; at June 30 they held 1,349,987 shares across a single holder, Ariel Investments, at a 0.49% weight. The full market moved far more: 679,978,198 reported shares, up 127,462,455, across 1,034 filers — in a quarter when the price fell 4.8%. The 5% register printed eight filings, all passive, and its two repeat chains were roughly halved — Franklin from 5.8% to 2.8%, T. Rowe Price from 5.5% to 2.8%. Insiders recorded no purchase in 166 filings, ever, in our parse, against 15 sales; the last 90 days recorded neither. Congress records nothing. And the borrow stands at 35,490,948 shares — 12.5% below its July 2026 peak, 5.9% above a year ago, 4.72% of the shares outstanding. One plausible reading is that the quarter's accumulation arrived through the broad register, while the registers that file with the most discretion — the tracked cohort, the repeat 5% holders, insiders — added one small new position between them. The record supports each clause separately; it does not say whether the broad register is early or the narrow ones are right.
What Would Change the Picture
Nothing above is a recommendation. It is a record. These are the filings that would change the description:
- 1. The 2026Q3 13Fs (filing window closing mid-November 2026). The cohort held 1,349,987 shares at June 30, all of it Ariel's new position. Whether Ariel builds, holds or exits — and whether a second tracked manager appears — are the first things the next register answers.
- 2. A first insider purchase, ever, in the parsed record. The record holds zero purchases across 166 filings through October 2, 2026, against 15 sales. A single purchase breaks the pattern.
- 3. Whether the halved 5% chains stabilise. Franklin has printed 43,836,112 shares (5.8%) and then 21,288,443 (2.8%); T. Rowe Price has printed 40,357,717 (5.5%) and then 20,715,906 (2.8%). A print holding either stake near its latest level ends the step-down.
- 4. Whether the borrow keeps easing, or reclaims its peak. Short interest stands at 35,490,948 shares, 12.5% below the peak of 40,541,845 and 4.8% below the June 30, 2026 settlement of 37,269,757. A reading below the year-ago 33,525,032 puts the borrow under its year-ago level; one above 40,541,845 sets a new peak.
- 5. A first congressional record, at any size, in either chamber. All three aggregates carry no PPL row; a single recorded trade gives this lens its first entry.
Until one of those prints, the record describes a stock held by one of our 83 tracked superinvestors — 1,349,987 shares, opened in the quarter its price fell 4.8% — whose insiders have recorded no purchase in the entire parsed record, whose two largest repeat 5% chains were roughly halved, and whose borrow stands at 4.72% of the shares outstanding.
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 runs through October 2, 2026; Congress through October 3, 2026 (Senate October 1); 13D/G through the July 31, 2026 filing; short interest through September 15, 2026; prices end October 2, 2026. Two limits are specific to this name: the site's 90-day insider aggregate carries no PPL row, so Lens 3 rests entirely on the full parse; and the full-market aggregate's reported value implies $34.26 per share against the $36.35 close, so this audit headlines filer and share counts. The congressional lens is an absence, stated as such: no trade is recorded in our coverage — not proof that none could exist outside it.
Related reading: Two of 83: The Superinvestors Cut Reddit 18.9% in Q2. No Officer Has Ever Bought a Share. — Filing Tape #66; Three of 83: Every Superinvestor in Seagate Is New. Its Insiders Have Never Bought a Share. — Filing Tape #65; Seven of 83: The Superinvestors Cut Eli Lilly 21.8% in Q2. Its Insiders Have Not Bought in a Year. — Filing Tape. PPL's own page: PPL Corp (PPL) on GetCoattail.
Methodology and data notes
- Superinvestor lens: 83 managers collected directly from SEC EDGAR Form 13F (managers_13f collection), positions as of June 30, 2026; PPL identified by CUSIP 69351T106. One distinct manager holds a long position totalling 1,349,987 shares; there are no option rows for this name in the collection. The direction count on the collection's labels, across the long rows, is one NEW (John Rogers - Ariel Investments); the collection's exit list contains no PPL row. Quarter-to-quarter cohort totals (0 long shares at March 31; 1,349,987 long shares at June 30) are from the site pipeline's holdings files on the same CUSIP basis in both quarters — the first-quarter file contains no row for this CUSIP at all — and the pipeline's second-quarter totals match the EDGAR collection exactly on both shares and value (differences of 0 shares and $0). Ariel's share of the cohort is 100.0% = 1,349,987 / 1,349,987 by construction, since it is the only holder.
- Full-market lens: SEC Form 13F Data Sets full-market aggregation. The primary table is the full13f collection's by-ticker file (holders = distinct filers reporting the CUSIP; 1,028 reported long positions out of 1,034 filers). PPL reports under a single CUSIP spelling, 69351T106, and the backfill fixtures' by-CUSIP file carries the same row — the cross-check matches on every numeric field (holders, holdersLong, shares, reported value, prior holders and prior reported value). The by-ticker file's entered/exited fields (908 and 851, a net of +57 that matches the change in holder count) are gross flows, so this audit headlines the net change. Reported-value caution: the aggregate value ($23,293,389,127 over 679,978,198 shares) implies $34.26 per share against a June 30, 2026 close of $36.35 in our price file, a gap of -5.7% — printed here as found. The aggregate sums the VALUE of every information-table row — including put and call option rows — while the share count covers long common-stock rows only, so we headline filer and share counts and label dollar values "reported."
- Insider lens: full-parse Form 4 aggregation (agg_by_ticker), record as of October 2, 2026 (166 filings). Sale and purchase counts are transaction-code counts (S and P) in non-derivative rows; grants and exercises are not counted as purchases, and one filing can contain many transaction rows. Purchase transactions total 0 across the parsed record (0 shares, $0, zero buyers) and officer purchase transactions total 0 in the 90-day window, the last year and the full record alike (officerBuyTx 0 and officerBuyValUsd $0 in each). Sale transactions total 15 across the record (71,523 shares, $2,476,475.98, six sellers, all 15 of them recorded as officer sales); the last year holds 1 (7,051 shares, $250,733.56, one seller, one officer sale) alongside no purchases, and the 90-day window holds 0 sales and no purchases across 11 filings. The site's insider aggregate (compiled as of October 13, 2026, 90-day window) carries no PPL row at all, so there is no site figure to reconcile against the full parse for this name; this audit prints the full parse as the record. No field of the full-parse aggregate had to be excluded: its sale-value totals imply $35.56 per share for the one-year window and $34.62 across the full record, each inside the traded price range of its window on our price file ($31.97 to $39.81 for the one-year window's dates, and $22.55 to $39.81 across the price file), so all value totals are cited as figures in this article.
- 13D/G lens: full-parse SC 13D/G parsed filings (8 filings matching issuer CIK 922224 on CUSIP 69351T106, 12 reporting-person rows across 8 names as filed: five SC 13G filings and three SC 13G/A amendments, no SC 13D filing), filings through July 31, 2026. The site aggregation's by-ticker row for PPL (8 filings, 0 D-filings, 8 G-filings, 3 amendments, 8 reporters, latest date July 31, 2026, maximum 7.31% and 256,326,012 reported shares) matches the parsed filings on every field. The parsed reporting-person rows sum to 256,326,012 shares, but that total sums reporting-person rows across different dates and counts the Franklin Resources stake's co-reporters (Charles B. Johnson and Rupert H. Johnson, Jr., each at 0 shares) alongside it, so it is not used as a stake figure in the article. The Franklin Resources, Inc. rows (43,836,112 shares at 5.8% as of March 31, 2026, filed April 29, 2026, SC 13G; then 21,288,443 at 2.8% as of June 30, 2026, filed July 28, 2026, SC 13G/A — a change of -22,547,669 shares, -51.4%), the T. Rowe Price Investment Management, Inc. rows (40,357,717 shares at 5.5% as of December 31, 2025, filed February 17, 2026, SC 13G; then 20,715,906 at 2.8% as of March 31, 2026, filed May 15, 2026, SC 13G/A — a change of -19,641,811 shares, -48.7%), Vanguard Capital Management's row (54,981,572 shares at 7.31% as of March 31, 2026, filed April 30, 2026, SC 13G — the register maximum), The Vanguard Group's row (0 shares at 0.0% as of March 13, 2026, filed March 27, 2026, SC 13G/A), Vanguard Portfolio Management's row (37,769,687 shares at 5.02% as of June 30, 2026, filed July 31, 2026, SC 13G — the register's latest filing) and STATE STREET CORPORATION's row (37,376,575 shares at 5.1% as of June 30, 2025, filed August 11, 2025, SC 13G) are reported as filed, under the names exactly as they appear. The three Vanguard-named rows are separate reporting persons as filed and are not merged in this audit. The parsed coverage for this issuer holds these 8 filings; a 5% holder that has not filed in the covered window would not appear here.
- Congress lens: Senate PTR archive and House PTR archive as maintained on this site. The combined record (as of October 3, 2026), the House aggregate (as of October 3, 2026) and the Senate aggregate (as of October 1, 2026) each carry no PPL row at all, so there is no combined record to decompose: no purchase, sale, member or party field exists for this ticker in any of the three aggregates. This audit reports that absence as the finding, and does not reconstruct individual filers beyond what the aggregates state.
- Short interest lens: FINRA Equity Short Interest files (biweekly settlement dates), collected directly from FINRA's public distribution. The published series covers 137 settlements from January 15, 2021 (11,230,219 shares) to September 15, 2026. The latest reading is 35,490,948 shares on September 15, 2026, down 5.05% from the prior settlement (37,379,443 on August 31, 2026), which had risen from 36,670,619 on August 14, 2026, following 39,012,446 on July 31 and 40,541,845 on July 15 — the last five settlements decline with one uptick rather than trending in a straight line. The series maximum is 40,541,845 shares on July 15, 2026 (verified by a maximum query over the series, not read off the latest row), so the latest reading sits 12.5% below the peak. The year-ago settlement (September 15, 2025) printed 33,525,032 shares, so the latest reading sits 5.9% above a year ago. The series minimum is 8,207,035 shares on July 15, 2021. The June 30, 2026 settlement printed 37,269,757 shares, so the latest reading sits 4.8% below the 13F snapshot date's borrow. FINRA publishes each settlement about two weeks after the fact, so the October price action is not yet in this series. The share-count ratio (4.72%) uses the fundamentals file's shares-outstanding figure below.
- Fundamentals note: our fundamentals collection carries PPL's revenue of $9,042,000,000, net income of $1,181,000,000 and assets of $45,244,000,000, each labelled fiscal 2025 in the file. The file is marked ok for this name, with no missing fields: shares outstanding of 752,350,362 (as of April 30, 2026 in the file, sourced in the file to a dei share count) and a file-computed market value of $25,354,207,773.40. The file's price for the name is $33.70 as of October 6, 2026; our daily-close file ends October 2, 2026 at $32.80, and we keep the two files' figures separate rather than blending them.
- Prices: our own daily-close file for PPL through October 2, 2026 ($32.80 close, -6.3% year to date on that file; 252-session closing high $39.81 on April 9, 2026, so the last close sits 17.6% below it; 252-session closing low $31.97 on September 24, 2026; closes of $38.20 at March 31, 2026 and $36.35 at June 30, 2026, a second-quarter change of -4.8%; change from June 30 to October 2 of -9.8%; change from the 252-session low of +2.6%; change from the September 30, 2025 close of $37.16 of -11.7%). The series in our price file begins June 1, 2021 at $29.00 and holds 1,342 rows.
- Market context sources: AltIndex trending meme-stocks list (PPL ranked fifteenth with 33 mentions, +120%, neutral sentiment; list updated October 13, 2026, 10:56 AM Pacific, at https://altindex.com/meme-stocks, checked October 14, 2026); the $23 billion capital plan through 2029 and the 6% to 8% long-term EPS growth target, as described on the company's site and carried by ad-hoc-news on October 7–8, 2026, checked October 14, 2026; second-quarter 2026 ongoing EPS of $0.33, revenue of $2.11 billion and reaffirmed fiscal-2026 ongoing EPS guidance of $1.90 to $1.98, as reported by MarketBeat and carried by ad-hoc-news in September–October 2026, checked October 14, 2026; the MarketBeat consensus (moderate buy, average target $40.21), the Scotiabank strong-buy upgrade of September 29, 2026 and the Barclays overweight maintenance with target lowered from $41 to $38 on October 12, 2026, as carried by MarketBeat-derived reports and GuruFocus on October 12, 2026, checked October 14, 2026. Figures we could not confirm against two sources were left out; the external items above are reported speech from those outlets, not GetCoattail measurements.
- PPL is in the GetCoattail stock-page universe: PPL Corp (PPL) stock page. Series data: ppl_lens_data.csv · ppl_short_interest_series.csv. Earlier audits: Reddit · Seagate.
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 14, 2026: first publication.