Joby Aviation reports today with a stock that has bounced hard off recent lows — up 10% on the week to $7.97 — yet carries one of the heavier short positions in its peer group and a CEO who has been selling into strength.
The short side of this trade is substantial and has been building. Short interest reached 12% of free float as of August 4, up roughly 6% over the past month in share-count terms. The most notable step-change came in late July, when shorted shares jumped from around 104 million to 110 million in the span of a week. That build has been sticky — the position has barely moved in either direction since. Borrow conditions remain relaxed: cost to borrow is less than 0.8%, one of the lowest readings in the 30-day window, and availability has actually loosened slightly this week to roughly 45% of short interest — meaning lenders still hold nearly half as many shares again as are currently borrowed. That is tight relative to where availability was in late June (above 90%), but it is not the kind of pinched supply that historically accompanies squeeze setups. Options traders are even less concerned about downside. The put/call ratio has dropped to 0.31, well below its 20-day average of 0.34 and near its 52-week low of 0.28. That is the opposite of a hedged-up crowd — options buyers are leaning decidedly bullish heading into the print.
The Street is harder to read cleanly. The most recent analyst activity clustered around the Q1 print in early May, when both Canaccord and Morgan Stanley trimmed price targets while holding their ratings — Canaccord moved to $11.50 from $15.50, Morgan Stanley to $13.00 from $15.00. Neither cut reflects the current $7.97 price favourably. Needham remains the lone buy at $18.00, a target it has held unchanged through several reprices. JP Morgan, the most structurally bearish voice, has an Underweight rating and a $7.00 target — almost exactly where the stock is trading. Goldman initiated at Sell in late 2025 with a $10.00 target. The factor scores reinforce the cautious fundamental backdrop: short score ranks in just the 6th percentile, EPS momentum is at the 6th and 12th percentile on 30- and 90-day windows respectively, and analyst recommendation divergence scores at the 5th percentile. The price-to-book multiple of 4.3x has compressed by roughly 1.3 turns over the past 30 days as the stock drifted lower — the monthly drawdown of 6% arrived even as the week's bounce partially recovered ground.
The ownership picture adds a wrinkle. Joby's founder and CEO JoeBen Bevirt sold 596,666 shares on July 15 at $7.75, collecting roughly $4.6 million. That came alongside smaller sales from the Chief Legal Officer and other C-suite members across July. The 90-day insider net is technically positive at around 715,000 shares due to award grants, but stripping out awards, the directional signal from cash transactions is clearly outward. Toyota remains the largest external holder at 13% of shares, with no reported change in its position. Baillie Gifford added roughly 12.8 million shares in the quarter to March, but that data is now several months stale. BlackRock and State Street both added in the most recent period.
The two prior earnings releases provide sharply diverging reference points. In May, the stock surged 15% on the day and 27% over the following five days. In June, it dropped 4.5% on day one and shed 22.5% over five days. The setup into today's print — a sharp pre-earnings rally, elevated short interest, a CEO who just sold near current prices, and a JP Morgan target that sits at a discount to the market — makes the range of outcomes unusually wide. What the print is actually about for most investors is less the quarterly cash burn and more whether Joby can offer any timeline clarity on FAA certification, which remains the single variable neither bulls nor bears can model with confidence.
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