Ondas Inc. reports Q2 earnings on August 13 with the same core tension documented across the past two weeks — but the stock has added another 4% since Friday's close, and bears have still not flinched.
The positioning picture is essentially frozen. Short interest measured 235.1 million shares as of August 6, holding within a band of 233–236 million for three consecutive weeks. That represents 63.8% of the free float — one of the most extreme readings in the small-cap communications equipment universe. The borrow market has no room left: availability is 0%, meaning every share in the lending pool is already out on loan, a level that has been locked in for over a month. The cost of carrying that short position has eased slightly from a July 28 peak above 20% APR to 13.2%, but remains more than triple where it was in early July. Bears are paying a meaningful daily carry charge to hold a position against a stock that has gained 22% on the week and 24% on the month. They have not covered.
Options positioning offers no dramatic overlay — the put/call ratio of 0.46 is essentially in line with its 20-day average of 0.47, sitting fractionally below the mean rather than spiking in either direction. There is no unusual options hedging into the print. That makes the short book the dominant positioning story, not the derivatives market. The ORTEX short score of 75.9 — in the bottom 1st percentile of the universe on short score rank — confirms the read: this is a heavily shorted name running against an immovable short base heading into a catalyst.
The bull case rests on execution against a $525M revenue target for 2026 and a $1.5B opportunity pipeline built partly through the DZYNE Technologies acquisition. Needham trimmed its price target to $19 in early July while keeping a Buy rating — still more than double the current $9.11 share price. The bear case, consistent with three months of position-building, centers on defense spending volatility, uneven commercial adoption, and the company's history of capital-intensive operations that have produced negative earnings yield and a deeply negative EV/EBITDA. The CEO received a 4.5 million share award in June and sold roughly 2.4 million shares at $13.43 the following day — a transaction that drew attention at the time and remains the largest insider move in the recent record. Meanwhile, BlackRock added more than 30 million shares through July, and State Street added over 9 million — institutional flows that partly contradict the concentrated short thesis.
Wednesday's print will test whether the revenue ramp toward that $525M target is visible in Q2 results — and whether any guidance language on contract execution gives the frozen short base a reason to finally move.
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