Ondas Inc. enters the week of September 22 with short sellers unmoved, the borrow market fully exhausted for the seventh consecutive week, and options positioning suddenly the most defensive it has been all year.
The most notable development this week is not in the short book — it is in the options market. The put/call ratio jumped to 0.51 on Monday, nearly four standard deviations above its 20-day average of 0.46. That is the highest reading of the past year, breaching the prior 52-week peak of 0.54, and it arrived without any corresponding shift in the short position. Options traders are reaching for downside protection at an intensity that stands apart from recent history. The short book, by contrast, has barely moved. Shares short ticked up 1.5% on the week to approximately 230.6 million — essentially oscillating within the same tight band that has persisted since early September. At 62.6% of free float, short interest is marginally higher than the 61.8% reported in the prior note, but the directional conviction from the bear camp remains absent. The borrow market adds no new information: availability is 0%, every share in the lending pool remains lent out, a condition that has now held for the majority of the past six weeks. Cost to borrow has eased considerably — down more than 50% from its August peak of roughly 12.9% to 5.4% today — which removes one mechanical pressure point but changes nothing about the structural lock-up.
The Street remains broadly constructive, but the stock is trading far below where analysts think it belongs. The mean price target across covering analysts is roughly $19, against a close of $7.38 — implying implied upside of around 160%. All recent actions have been reiterations of buy-side ratings: Needham held its Buy and $19 target as recently as September 14, while Ladenburg and Oppenheimer both raised targets in August following Q2 results. Roth Capital initiated with a Buy and a $13 target in mid-August, adding a fourth bullish voice. The bull case centres on Ondas's autonomous systems trajectory and the strategic logic of the Gate/Bron acquisition — a $390M deal for Israeli precision-strike and fuzing technology that fits the vertically integrated defense narrative. The bear case is straightforward: the company has a history of sustained losses, the valuation assumes a revenue inflection that has not yet arrived, and dilution risk remains live following the 10.7 million share registration that accompanied the deal announcement. The EV/EBITDA multiple is deeply negative at -64.9, and the ORTEX short score of 72.3 ranks in the second percentile of the universe — meaning almost every stock in the database carries less short-side pressure than ONDS.
Institutional ownership tells a more nuanced story. BlackRock crossed the 5% threshold in July, filing a 13G at 7.2% and reporting approximately 39.5 million shares held as of August 31. Vanguard Capital Management similarly filed a fresh 13G at 5.2% in July. The arrival of these passive giants in size is notable context — though as passive holders their presence is more a function of index mechanics and factor exposure than an active bet on the deal thesis. On the activist register, Joseph Popolo — who filed a Schedule 13D in January — disclosed a reduction to 4.95% in June 2025, falling below the filing threshold. Per standard disclosure rules, he may have exited further without any obligation to refile. On the insider side, the 90-day net figure is a net sale of roughly $32 million in value, though the composition matters: the August transactions are primarily option exercises and tax-withholding sales (transaction codes M and F), not discretionary open-market selling. The one open-market transaction flagged was a director sale of 7,500 shares under a pre-arranged 10b5-1 plan — a planned disposition rather than a conviction signal.
Peers in the communications equipment space had a stronger week. LTRX gained 22% and MOB rose 15%, while ONDS managed just 2.1%. RBBN fell 8.5%, the one notable laggard in the cohort. ONDS's relative underperformance against the two strongest movers underscores that the short positioning is acting as a persistent drag even as the sector finds buyers.
Next earnings are flagged for November 13. The last print delivered a 5.4% one-day decline and a 14.2% drawdown over the following five days — the most recent reaction data worth carrying into any pre-earnings positioning review. With options now running at their most defensive posture of the past year, the question heading into the next six weeks is whether that caution reflects deal-integration uncertainty, dilution anxiety, or something the options market has priced that the short book has not yet moved on.
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