T3 Defense Inc. arrives at its May 13 earnings print carrying a Nasdaq delisting notice, a short base at a 30-day high, and a borrow market that has tightened sharply in a single week — a convergence that makes this one of the more charged setups among small-cap defense software names right now.
The story this week starts with a Friday filing. T3 Defense disclosed on May 8 that it received a Nasdaq delisting notice for failing to meet continued listing requirements, with a compliance deadline of November 2. The stock closed at $0.4778 — a 28% drop over the past month — though it clawed back 7.4% on Friday, likely on relief that the company has time to regain compliance rather than face immediate delisting. That relief rally arrives with the stock still well off prior levels, and earnings four days away.
Short sellers have been rebuilding into the news. Short interest climbed to 19.5% of the free float as of May 7 — a 10.3% increase over the week and 11.9% higher than a month ago. The borrowing cost moved up 6% on the week to 14.6%, reversing a month-long decline that had brought it down from above 16% in early April. Most strikingly, borrow availability has tightened to just 33% of short interest, meaning roughly one share is available for every three currently shorted. That is a notably tight lending pool. The ORTEX short score is 70.6, placing the stock in the 5th percentile for short score rank — deep into the high-conviction short territory by that measure. Availability tightened abruptly this week: the utilization rate jumped from 58.9% at the start of the week to 86.8% by Thursday, its highest level in over a month.
The structural picture around ownership adds further texture. The top two holders — CEO Menachem Shalom (18.1% of shares) and Anastasiia Kotaieva (7.1%) — are largely insider names, not institutional funds. Vanguard and BlackRock hold a combined 2% between them. On April 28, Shalom converted approximately $2.14 million in personally held promissory notes into roughly 4.1 million restricted shares — a balance-sheet move that reduces outstanding debt but also dilutes existing shareholders. His reported holdings climbed to 7.68 million shares, with a last-reported change of over 6.4 million shares. The insider dataset here is stale (last trade data is from December 2025), so direct read-through on recent buying or selling intent is limited.
Earnings history makes uncomfortable reading ahead of May 13. The last two significant prints resulted in one-day drops of 21.6% and 15.8% respectively. The December 2025 release was the only recent exception, adding 1.6% on the day before fading 9.3% over the following week. Three of the last four events ended with the stock lower after five days. With short interest elevated, the borrow pool tight, and a delisting notice just filed, the May 13 release is less a routine quarterly check-in and more a test of whether the company can articulate a credible path back to listing compliance — and whether that narrative is enough to reverse a positioning setup that is skewed firmly to the downside.
What to watch: whether T3 Defense outlines a concrete Nasdaq compliance plan on the May 13 call, and whether short interest and borrow availability respond to whatever the print delivers.
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