Ondas Inc. enters the back half of May with its lending pool effectively exhausted — a material escalation from the friction flagged just days ago.
The borrow market has moved from tight to near-closed in less than a week. Availability has collapsed to 0%, down from roughly 10–11% at the start of this week and 17% a week prior. That means every share available in the lending pool is now out on loan — the tightest reading of the past year. Cost to borrow has climbed 34% week-on-week to 1.54%, reversing the month-long slide that had pulled it down from nearly 3.2% in early April. Borrow fees remain well below those April peaks, but the direction has shifted decisively upward. At the same time, short interest has risen to 46% of the free float — up roughly 3 percentage points over the past week and 4 points over the past month — after a 20% earnings-day jump on May 14 briefly pressured the short base. Shorts didn't cover into that spike; they added.
Options traders are sending a different signal. The put/call ratio at 0.50 runs slightly below its 20-day average of 0.51, and the z-score of -0.85 means positioning is modestly more bullish than the recent norm — not defensive. The 52-week PCR range runs from 0.05 to 0.54, and the current reading near the top of that range is not flashing unusual stress. Where the borrow market says maximum pressure, options traders are, if anything, leaning toward calls. That divergence is worth holding in mind.
The Street remains constructive but not loudly so. Needham reiterated its Buy and $23 target on May 19 — the only analyst action this week — against a stock now trading at $9.13, implying more than 150% upside to that target. Northland raised its target to $18 back in late March. All recent changes have been in one direction: higher targets, maintained Buy or Outperform ratings. The bull case centres on defence and critical infrastructure demand, a growing M&A pipeline, and recent capital raises. Bears point to execution risk, dilution from that same M&A activity, and customer concentration. Factor scores add nuance: the short-score rank is in the bottom 2nd percentile of the universe, the ORTEX short score itself runs at 69.3, and the DTC rank is at the 19th percentile — collectively, these place ONDS among the most aggressively shorted names in the database. EPS surprise sits at the 1st percentile, meaning the company has a recent history of missing estimates.
Institutional flows show some notable fresh buying. Defiance ETFs added its entire 10.3 million share position as of March 31 — a new stake. JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs both entered or substantially built positions in the same quarter, adding 6.7 million and 3.8 million shares respectively. Van Eck and BlackRock also added in April. Against that backdrop of institutional accumulation, the CEO sold 475,000 shares at $9.71 in late December — the most significant insider transaction in the trailing data, though it predates the recent price action by several months.
The stock closed Tuesday at $9.13, down 5.9% on the day and off 8.75% over the past month, giving back part of the post-earnings gains. The next confirmed earnings event is August 14. Between now and then, the key dynamic to watch is whether zero availability holds — or whether fresh supply enters the lending pool and changes the friction calculus — and how the short base behaves if the stock continues to drift below the $9 level. Peers LTRX and VSAT both traded flat to modestly positive on the week, leaving ONDS as the clear underperformer among correlated names.
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