TELEPERFORMANCE BECOMES EUROPE'S MOST SHORTED STOCK

The Paris-listed company faces mounting pressure from investors wagering that artificial intelligence will fundamentally reshape the customer service industry. Hedge funds are shorting both Teleperformance's shares and debt, viewing the sector as vulnerable to what they characterize as "clean" disruption. Teleperformance operates one of the world's largest networks of customer service centers, employing hundreds of thousands of workers globally. The company's business model—built on labor-intensive, high-volume customer interactions—has become a focal point for AI disruption concerns. The surge in short positions reflects broader anxiety about outsourcing firms' long-term viability. As AI language models and chatbots mature, they increasingly handle routine customer inquiries without human intervention, threatening a core revenue driver for companies in the sector. Teleperformance has not commented on the short position data. The company trades on the Euronext Paris exchange.