Ondas Inc. heads into its August 14 earnings date with short interest now at 64% of the free float — a new high in the observable window — and a lending market that remains completely locked.
The short position has been the defining story for this stock all month, and it intensified further this week. Short interest climbed from roughly 57% of the float on July 21 to 64% by July 28, adding another 26 million shares in a single week. That 13% weekly increase follows a 42% rise over the past month. The scale of the position is striking: more than 235 million shares are now on loan. Bears have kept building even as the borrow has grown more punishing.
The lending market leaves no room for new shorts. Availability has been locked at 0% for virtually every session since late June — every share in the lending pool is already out on loan. The cost of holding those positions reflects the scarcity. The cost to borrow hit 20.4% APR on July 28, up from 16.1% just one day earlier, and more than five times the level seen in early July when it was running near 3.8%. A month ago, that rate was below 2%. Existing short holders are paying an accelerating toll to stay in the trade. The ORTEX short score has climbed to 75.97, up from 71.6 two weeks ago — a steady daily grind higher that places the stock in the most extreme short-positioning percentile of the universe. Options traders, by contrast, look calm: the put/call ratio at 0.45 is marginally below its 20-day average, suggesting options market participants are not expressing fresh fear.
The Street remains constructive on paper but has started trimming targets. Needham cut its price target from $23 to $19 in early July while keeping a Buy rating. Northland Capital Markets holds an Outperform with a $18 target. The mean analyst target around $20 implies more than 150% upside from the current $7.86, but the stock has drifted far below those levels — it traded near $13.50 in early June and is down roughly 41% from that peak. The bull case rests on aggressive expansion, a growing autonomous systems and rail communications business, and strong revenue growth. The bear case is harder to dismiss: widening operating losses, government contract dependence, heavy R&D spend, and the dilution risk flagged by an SEC prospectus supplement filed July 24 all weigh on the thesis. Highlander Partners holds 5.7% of shares, and BlackRock added more than 12 million shares in the latest reported quarter, offering some institutional ballast — but the short community has voted loudly in the other direction.
Recent earnings history adds context without offering comfort. The May print produced a +19.9% one-day move but faded to just +3.6% over five days. Before that, an earnings event triggered a -13.5% one-day drop. The pattern is violent and mean-reverting. With the short position now at 64% of the float, an earnings beat on August 14 would create acute short-covering pressure in a pool with zero availability — while a miss would deliver bears their payoff on an expensive carry trade. The setup into that print is the most structurally charged it has been all year.
What to watch between now and August 14: whether the cost to borrow continues its near-vertical rise as shorts pay more to hold positions they cannot add to, and whether any crack in the 0% availability reading — however brief — triggers a covering cascade before the earnings catalyst arrives.
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