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AST SpaceMobile enters the first week of October with an 8% single-day rally, a fresh analyst downgrade, and a short base that has grown 16% in a month, a stock where the bulls and bears are both making louder arguments at the same time.
The most important change since last week's note is the shift in borrow availability. On September 29 and 30, availability had essentially collapsed to below 1%, meaning the lending pool was fully exhausted. That pressure has partially released. Availability is back to 4.4% as of October 6, up from a low of 0.81% seen at the end of September. That is still extremely tight, fewer than five shares remain available for every hundred already lent out, but it represents a genuine loosening from what was effectively a complete standstill. Cost to borrow has also eased, falling 15% on the week to 1.29%. The short score has pulled back fractionally from its recent peak of 74.9 to 74.8, though it remains in the 2nd percentile for short score rank, confirming that the lending market is still highly charged. Short interest itself has barely moved, up 0.5% on the week to 24.3% of the free float, and has climbed 16% over the past month. The base is large and sticky.
The Street narrative got more complicated on October 2, when B. Riley Securities downgraded ASTS to Neutral from Buy, cutting its target from $85 to $65. That puts the stock, now at $63.11, almost exactly at B. Riley's revised ceiling, with little implied upside from that vantage point. The broader analyst picture is split: Berenberg initiated with a Buy and a $92 target in early September, Piper Sandler and Cantor Fitzgerald both carry Overweight ratings with targets of $98 and $90 respectively, while UBS sits at Neutral with a $78 target. The mean target across the group is $78, implying around 24% upside from current levels, but the distribution is wide. The bull case rests on maintained 2026 revenue guidance, improving backlog visibility, and a target of roughly 45 satellites in orbit by early 2027. The bear case is grounded in hard numbers: FCF burn of $695 million in Q2, negative adjusted EBITDA, a Q2 launch failure, and spectrum interference risk from competing constellations. The price-to-book multiple has expanded to 12.9x on the back of the recent price move, while EPS surprise ranks in the 92nd percentile, one of the few flattering factor readings.
The ownership register carries a detail worth noting. AT&T, American Tower, Vodafone Ventures, and Rakuten Mobile all hold Schedule 13D filings on the stock, meaning the company carries multiple strategic investors who originally declared activist or material-influence intent. As required disclosure: these positions are as last filed around the 5% threshold, and holders can reduce below that level without filing again. Rakuten's most recent amendment, filed in May, showed its stake trimmed from 7.2% to 5.3%. CEO Abel Avellan holds 20.8% of the class, unchanged in his most recent filing. On insider activity, the 90-day net is modestly negative at just over 2.4 million dollars in net sales, driven primarily by the CTO's $2.4 million open-market sale on September 16 under a pre-arranged 10b5-1 plan. A director, Adriana Cisneros, made open-market purchases totalling around $620,000 at the end of August, a small but discretionary buy at prices close to current levels.
Options positioning is calm against that backdrop. The put/call ratio is running at 0.50, roughly in line with its 20-day average of 0.49, and sits near the middle of its 52-week range. That is notable: despite a 16% month-on-month rise in short interest and an extremely tight lending market, options traders have not moved to load up on downside protection ahead of the November 10 earnings date. Closest peer IRDM gained 2.3% on the week, and TSAT added 4%, both tracking the broader ASTS move but at a fraction of the magnitude, pointing to the idiosyncratic nature of the positioning in ASTS specifically.
With earnings set for November 10, now 34 days away, the question of whether launch progress and revenue guidance hold will be the primary event to track.
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