AST SpaceMobile enters the week with its most significant short-covering in over a month — yet the borrow market has tightened further still, leaving the setup more constrained than ever ahead of August earnings.
The clearest development this week is the covering. Short interest dropped to 63.6 million shares by July 24, down roughly 6% in a single session and off from the 68.3 million peak recorded on July 21. That pull-back brings SI to 22.9% of the free float — still elevated, but the first meaningful reduction since the brief July 10 window noted in last week's note. The ORTEX short score has eased marginally to 70.2 from 70.6 at the peak, consistent with a partial unwind rather than any structural change in conviction. On a monthly basis, short interest is still 10% higher than where it started June, which means the bears who covered this week remain well in profit on positions built through the stock's 23% monthly decline.
The borrow market tells a starkly different story. Availability has collapsed to just 0.3% — the 52-week low — meaning fewer than one share remains available for every three hundred already borrowed. A week ago availability was still at 7.8%; the week prior it had briefly recovered to 24.4%. That near-complete drain happened as the stock fell 5% on the day and 2.8% on the week. Cost to borrow is at 1.5%, up 14% on the week and nearly double where it traded a month ago. The combination of near-zero availability and rising borrow costs means any new short position is effectively impossible to establish, while existing shorts face incrementally higher carrying costs. The lending pool has been at or near full capacity for four of the past five trading days.
Options traders remain noticeably calm given the turbulence elsewhere in the name. The put/call ratio is running at 0.48, barely above its 20-day average of 0.47 and well within one standard deviation of normal. That reading sits roughly in the middle of the 52-week range of 0.32 to 0.67. There is no sign of elevated hedging demand, which contrasts sharply with the borrow-market distress and may reflect the difficulty of building additional downside exposure through any channel given how locked-up the lending pool has become.
The Street is providing a modest counterweight to the bear positioning. B. Riley Securities upgraded to Buy on July 17 while keeping a $85 target, and Piper Sandler initiated at Overweight with a $100 target on July 16 — two constructive moves that brought fresh institutional attention to the name. The consensus remains hold-leaning with three buys and six holds, and the mean target of $85–100 across recent initiations implies significant upside from the current $56.20 price, though Deutsche Bank's May downgrade to Hold with a $106 target (now well above market) and Barclays' persistent Underweight at $65 keep the debate alive. The EV/EBITDA multiple has compressed sharply — down roughly 230 points over 30 days as the stock has sold off — though the company remains pre-profitability with a P/E of -77x and deeply negative earnings yield. The bull case rests on the 202% revenue growth trajectory and the IP moat enabling direct-to-device 5G; the bear case is capital intensity, operating losses, and Starlink's head start.
Insider activity is a notable counterpoint to the bullish analyst moves. CEO Abel Avellan sold 2.5 million shares on June 22 for roughly $147 million at $58.68 — a price barely above where the stock trades now — following smaller sales by the CFO, CTO, and COO in late May and early June when the stock was above $90. The 90-day net insider activity is a $449 million net sale. That level of executive distribution at prices materially above current levels is worth tracking alongside the analyst upgrades.
Earnings land on August 11. The prior two prints both triggered day-one declines — down 10.2% in June and down 2.8% in May — though the five-day reaction after the May print was a 15.7% recovery. With availability at its tightest point of the past year and a 22.9% short position locked in at effectively zero room to add, the August 11 print becomes the next meaningful potential catalyst for position resolution in either direction.
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