Ondas Inc. has crossed a new threshold: short interest is now above 53% of the free float, the borrow market remains completely shut, and the cost to borrow has tripled in a single week — a combination that makes the lending setup more charged than at any point in the previous two notes.
The positioning story has sharpened materially since the June 29 convergence report. Short interest hit 53.5% of the free float on June 30 — up from 49.1% when the last note was filed, and up 18.6% on the week alone. That is a further acceleration of the grind that has been in place since mid-May. Availability remains locked at 0%, where it has been for all but a handful of sessions since June 16. The lending pool is empty. New short positions cannot be established at scale. What has changed most visibly this week is the cost to borrow, which has jumped from roughly 1.6% to 5.84% — a 266% move in five sessions. On June 29 it briefly touched 7.04% before easing back. The absolute level is not extreme for a heavily shorted small-cap, but the pace of that move — tripling in a week while availability holds at zero — signals that prime brokers are repricing a supply problem that shows no sign of resolving. The ORTEX short score climbed to 71.3 on June 30, the highest point in the trailing 10-day window, with the utilization rank sitting at the 4th percentile of the broader universe.
The Street remains firmly bullish on paper, though the gap between analyst targets and the current price is striking. The mean target across covering analysts is $20.13 — more than 2.4x the current price of $8.24. Needham reiterated its Buy in mid-May with a $23 target. Northland raised to $18 in late March. Every covering analyst who has acted on this stock in 2026 has maintained or raised. The bull case centres on defense and autonomous systems market growth, M&A momentum, and a revenue trajectory that expanded over 790% in the trailing year. Bears, however, point to exactly the kind of structural issues that can sustain a 53% short position: revenues remain modest relative to the cost base, procurement cycles are long and often delayed, and FAA regulatory clarity around commercial drone operations remains incomplete. The EV/EBITDA multiple of -83x and a negative earnings yield make fundamental valuation arguments difficult. Factor scores for EPS surprise and 12-month forward EPS growth both rank at the 1st percentile — meaning the company's actual earnings delivery has consistently fallen short of expectations, even as sales expand rapidly.
The insider picture adds another layer of complexity. The largest recent transaction was a $31.9 million sale by Chairman and CEO Eric Brock on June 2, at $13.43 per share — well above the current price of $8.24. That sale came one day after Brock received an award of 4.5 million shares at zero cost. The structure is a common compensation arrangement, but the timing is notable: the CEO monetized near what has since proven to be a local high, and the stock has dropped 38% in the month since. A cluster of smaller director and executive sales — CFO, COO, and multiple directors — also hit on May 20 at $9.70. Net insider activity over the past 90 days is a positive 2.4 million shares in aggregate, driven almost entirely by the award rather than open-market buying.
Options positioning does not amplify the short-side pressure. The put/call ratio at 0.477 is essentially in line with its 20-day average of 0.466, with a z-score of just 0.54. It has spent the past two weeks near the top of its recent range but well below the 52-week high of 0.536. Options traders are not adding meaningful directional conviction in either direction. The most comparable peer move this week belongs to VSAT, which gained 41% on the week — a reminder that communications equipment names can move violently on specific catalysts, in either direction.
The next earnings event is scheduled for August 14. With short interest above 53%, availability at zero, cost to borrow having tripled in a week, and the CEO's most recent open-market action being a nine-figure sale near the recent high, the setup into that print is what to watch.
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