IonQ reports Q2 results on August 5 with short sellers heavily committed, borrow availability nearly exhausted, and options traders leaning bullish — a collision course that makes the print unusually high-stakes.
The borrow market remains critically tight. Availability has stayed near the floor, reading just 1.55% on July 30 — meaning roughly one share is left available for every 64 already lent out. That is a marginal recovery from the 1.25% reported last week, but still deep in distress territory, with the 52-week low at 0.10%. Short interest itself has held at 14.1% of free float, little changed from the July 24 reading flagged in the previous article, but the week-on-week trend remains up roughly 12%. The ORTEX short score is 67.0, ranking in the 3rd percentile of all tracked names — placing IonQ among the most bearishly positioned stocks in the universe. What has changed since last week is the cost to borrow: it has eased 26% over the past seven days to around 1.06%. That is an odd divergence — availability is still near zero, yet borrowing costs have softened. It suggests the existing short book is dug in rather than actively expanding, with new demand for borrows not yet pushing the cost back up.
Options traders are positioned for a move higher, not lower. The put/call ratio has slipped to 0.88, more than one standard deviation below its 20-day average of 0.97, near the bottom of its 52-week range. Call buying has dominated for several sessions running, even as the stock fell 32% over the past month to close at $36.44. The 11% rebound over the past week suggests some of that call positioning is already in the money, which adds to potential squeeze dynamics if the print is well-received.
The bull and bear cases are sharply drawn. Bulls point to revenue growing 334% year-on-year, an expanding backlog, and a Street consensus that remains firmly bullish — 10 buy ratings, a mean price target near $68, implying roughly 87% upside from the current price. The most recent target raise came from Northland Capital Markets in late June, lifting its objective to $70. Wedbush holds an Outperform with a $75 target. Bears counter that IonQ is structurally loss-making, carries a deeply negative EV/EBITDA, and competes against IBM, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft — companies with vastly deeper pockets. JPMorgan maintains a Neutral rating with a $50 target, a more cautious anchor in a bullish consensus. The EPS surprise factor score of 2 out of 100 is a notable warning: despite consistent revenue beats, the bottom line has persistently disappointed.
The August 5 print will test whether IonQ's revenue trajectory and backlog growth are strong enough to justify a re-rating — or whether the loss profile and competitive noise give the heavily-committed short book exactly the cover it needs to hold its ground.
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