Joby Aviation headed into Tuesday's Q1 earnings print with short sellers at their most aggressive in months — only to see the results land well ahead of expectations and send the stock surging, leaving bears scrambling.
The setup going into the print was unambiguous. Short interest had climbed 3.4% over the week to nearly 9.6% of the free float — around 87.4 million shares — its highest level in the trailing 30 days. The ORTEX short score reached 68.7, a reading that places Joby in the bottom 6th percentile of its universe for bearish positioning intensity. The bears had been building steadily since late April, clearly anticipating a miss or a cautious message around the company's path to commercialisation.
What they got instead was a Q1 revenue beat and management issuing FY2026 guidance of $105–115 million against a consensus estimate of $111.8 million — guidance that straddled expectations rather than undercut them. The stock surged on the news, though it gave back some of those gains to close May 5 at $8.68, still down 2.8% on the week. The whipsaw dynamic — a big intraday move that partially retraced — is characteristic of a high-short-interest name where covering pressure creates sharp but short-lived rallies.
The lending market tells the same story of rebuilding bearish conviction. Availability has tightened materially over the past two weeks, driven by a sharp rise in borrow demand: availability has moved from a comparatively relaxed 40–45% range in mid-April to 64.7% by May 5 — approaching the 52-week tightest reading of 68%. This is still within normal range rather than squeeze territory, and the cost to borrow remains low at just 0.70% annualised, up roughly 20% over the past month but barely punitive. The message is that short sellers are piling in but facing no meaningful friction yet. Options positioning adds a modest defensive layer, with the put/call ratio at 0.36 — slightly above its 20-day average of 0.33 but less than one standard deviation above it. Options traders were cautious but not alarmed.
Analyst opinion is split cleanly along conviction lines. Needham's Chris Pierce reiterated his Buy and $18 target on May 6, framing the Q1 beat as further validation of Joby's commercialisation trajectory and its Uber partnership as a differentiator. On the same day, Morgan Stanley's Kristine Liwag held her Equal-Weight rating but trimmed her target to $13 from $15 — acknowledging progress while staying guarded on timeline risk. JPMorgan maintains an Underweight with a $7 target, set in February and sitting just below the current price. The mean analyst target is $11.12 against an $8.68 close, implying roughly 28% upside — but the dispersion is wide, ranging from JPMorgan's scepticism at $7 to Needham's $18. The price-to-book multiple is 5.3x, not unreasonable for a pre-revenue technology company burning cash, but the EPS momentum score ranks in the 97th percentile over 30 days — a signal that estimate revisions have been moving sharply in the right direction near-term.
The ownership table adds a layer of strategic intrigue. Toyota holds 13.1% of the company, unchanged since December. Delta Air Lines retains just over 1.1%, also unchanged. Founder and CEO JoeBen Bevirt sold just over 460,000 shares on April 15 at $9.03, a $3.8 million disposal that trims his 9.3% stake modestly. The CFO and Chief Legal Officer made smaller sales around the same dates, all inside a window that followed stock awards. Net insider activity over 90 days shows more awards than disposals in aggregate — the net share count is positive — though the CEO's sale at a price above the current level is worth noting.
The next formal update is scheduled for June 2. Between now and then, the key question is whether short sellers absorbed by the Q1 rally treat the post-earnings dip as a re-entry point — or whether the beat and the guidance range are enough to begin unwinding positions that were built into an anticipated miss.
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