Ondas Inc. reports Q2 results tomorrow morning with the same brutal standoff in place — stock up 10% on the week, 34% on the month, and not a single meaningful share returned by short sellers.
The short position is essentially frozen at one of the most extreme levels in the small-cap universe. Short interest measured 234.8 million shares as of August 11 — 63.7% of the free float. That number has barely moved in three weeks. Since the July 21–24 window, when bears added roughly 27 million shares in three sessions to push the position from roughly 40% to above 63%, daily readings have held within a 233–236 million share band. The stock has gained 34% since then. Bears have absorbed every point of that rally without returning a meaningful block. The lending market confirms their commitment: availability has been locked at 0% for every tracked session across August and late July. Every share in the pool is already out on loan — the tightest reading possible, and one that has persisted for over a month. The cost of holding that position has eased from a July 28 peak above 20% annualised to 12.7% now, but that still represents more than triple the borrow rate from early July. Short sellers are paying real daily carry to hold a losing position and choosing not to exit.
Options positioning does not add much drama to the setup. The put/call ratio has drifted lower to 0.43, now more than two standard deviations below its 20-day average of 0.47. That reads as more bullish-leaning than usual on the options surface — call demand is elevated relative to recent norms — but the z-score of -2.36 is a modest signal against the scale of what the short book represents. This is not an options story. It is a short-conviction story with an options footnote.
The Street is lined up on the bull side, but coverage remains thin. Roth Capital initiated at Buy with a $13 target on August 11 — the most recent action, coming the day before the print. Needham lowered its target from $23 to $19 in early July while keeping its Buy rating. The consensus sits at Buy across seven analysts, with a mean price target near $19. Against a close of $9.74, that implies roughly 95% upside to the Street's composite view. Bulls point to the DZYNE Technologies acquisition as a transformative move into counter-drone and defense autonomy — a market with strong federal tailwinds. Bears flag the integration risk, the history of cash burn, and the dilution risk from an aggressive M&A posture. The EV/EBITDA multiple is deeply negative, reflecting a company that is still scaling, not earning. The ORTEX short score of 75.7 ranks in the 1st percentile of the universe — almost nothing scores higher on combined short-pressure signals.
Institutional ownership adds one genuinely interesting data point. BlackRock added 30.2 million shares in the most recent reported period, lifting its stake to 6.9% of shares outstanding. State Street added 9.2 million shares over the same window. These are passive and semi-passive flows, but the scale — BlackRock nearly quadrupled its position — reflects the kind of index-inclusion or float-weight rebalancing that can move a small-cap meaningfully. Against that, the CEO sold $31.9 million worth of stock in early June, immediately following a 4.5 million share award. The net 90-day insider position is technically positive in share count terms, but the June sell represents the most economically significant single insider transaction in the dataset.
The only historical earnings reactions on file are from May, when the stock moved nearly 20% higher the next day before giving back most of that gain over the following week. What happens tomorrow is therefore less about whether the bulls or bears are directionally correct on Ondas's long-term thesis, and more about whether the Q2 print gives the bears a concrete data point — cash burn, delayed contracts, guidance cuts — sufficient to justify holding a 63.7%-of-float short at 12.7% annualised carry against a stock that just gained a third of its value in a single month.
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