Ondas Inc. enters its August 13 earnings print with a striking divergence: the stock is up 13% on the week, yet the short position remains one of the most extreme in the market and the borrow is completely locked.
The most important update since the August 3 note is the price action itself. ONDS closed at $8.86 on August 4, having gained nearly 6% on the day and 13% over the week. That follows a 20% rise over the past month. Bears are not covering — short interest dipped fractionally to 63.5% of the free float, roughly 234 million shares on loan, essentially flat with the 235 million reported on July 28. The prior articles established that the position accelerated sharply in the July 21–24 window, adding 24 million shares in three sessions. That acceleration has not reversed. Short holders are sitting on a loss relative to the week's move, and they are staying in.
The lending market reinforces just how committed those bears are. Availability has been locked at 0% for every session tracked — every single share in the lending pool is already out on loan, the tightest reading possible and a level that has persisted for over a month. The cost of holding that position has eased modestly from its July 28 peak of 20.4% APR to 12.4% today, but that is still more than three times the sub-4% rate that prevailed in early July. The borrow cost tripled over the past month even as it has come off the peak this week. New short exposure is effectively unavailable at any price: with availability at zero, there are no shares left to borrow. Peers tell a very different story — and both gained on the week at 14% and 19% respectively, but neither carries anything like the structural short pressure visible in ONDS.
The Street's constructive stance sits at an unusual distance from where the stock trades. The most recent analyst action on record is Needham's July 7 target cut to $19 from $23 — a trim, but the rating stays at Buy. Northland Capital Markets carries an Outperform with a $18 target. Both targets sit more than double the current price of $8.86, implying over 100% upside on the analyst consensus view. Bears clearly disagree. The bull case centres on a $525 million revenue target for 2026 and the defense autonomous systems pipeline, including the recently announced hire of former Mossad Director David Barnea as Global President of Ondas Defense — a credentialing move noted in the August 3 report. The bear case points to capital intensity, dilution risk, and execution uncertainty in a defense budget environment that remains unpredictable. The P/E and EV/EBITDA multiples are both deeply negative, reflecting a company that is not yet profitable, so valuation is a long-duration argument on either side.
The ORTEX short score has climbed steadily and now registers 76.0, up from 72.8 on July 22 — its highest level in the observable window. That score sits at the first percentile of the universe on both short score rank and borrow utilization rank, meaning ONDS is among the most heavily shorted and most borrow-constrained names tracked. The one mildly contrarian signal is options: the put/call ratio has drifted slightly below its 20-day average at 0.46 versus a mean of 0.47, a negligibly bullish lean that is essentially noise. Options traders are not adding to the defensive posture — but they are not pressing the bull case aggressively either.
The earnings history adds one more layer of texture. The May 2026 print produced a 20% next-day rally. An earlier event that same month saw a 13% drop. The two-sided reaction history means the August 13 print is genuinely binary: a heavily loaded short position, a completely locked borrow market, and a stock that has already gained 20% into the event. Whether the short position begins to unwind or digs in further after the number is the central question heading into next week.
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