AST SpaceMobile is caught in a rare standoff: the stock just printed a 21% weekly gain while short sellers are adding, not retreating.
The price move is the headline. ASTS closed at $88.10 on Tuesday, up more than 20% on the week and barely off the level where Rakuten's Hiroshi Mikitani was dumping stock in April. That week-on-week rally makes the short-side behaviour striking. Short interest edged fractionally lower on the day to 20.1% of the free float — but it is still up roughly 2.3% on the week and has climbed from around 17.3% in early April to where it sits now. A month ago SI was near 16.6%; it has risen more than 21% in absolute share terms over 30 days. Shorts are not covering into the squeeze — they are rebuilding.
The borrow picture is worth reading carefully. Availability has loosened noticeably from where it was a week ago — now at 45.8% of outstanding short interest, up from lows around 27–29% seen in the middle of May. That compares with a 52-week trough of just 9.1%, so the market is not in a genuine borrow crunch at present. Cost to borrow remains a negligible 0.79% annualised — essentially free. What that combination tells you is that new shorts can still enter the trade cheaply and with room to build; the squeeze pressure that was building sharply in mid-May has partially released as stock has become more available, even as the price ripped higher. Options traders are leaning the other way. The put/call ratio has dropped to 0.37, well below its 20-day average of 0.41 and near its 52-week low of 0.32. Call volume is dominating — nearly three calls traded for every put — meaning the options market is expressing clear upside conviction at the same moment shorts are holding firm. That is the tension.
The Street is cautious rather than excited, and the analyst picture hasn't meaningfully shifted despite the price action. The consensus is a hold across six analysts with a mean target of $83.47 — roughly 5% below Tuesday's close. Both recent changes, from UBS and B. Riley in mid-May, held Neutral ratings while adjusting targets in opposite directions: UBS trimmed to $80, B. Riley nudged up to $85. Barclays, which carries the only Underweight, raised its target to $65 in April but remains a clear bear. The Street is essentially saying the stock is fairly valued at best and stretched at worst — a setup where an 88-handle is already ahead of where most models put fair value. The EPS surprise factor score of 94 stands out as a genuine bull anchor. Quality and value scores, as noted in prior coverage, remain deeply challenged: the P/E is deeply negative, P/B has climbed to 15.8x, and the EV/EBITDA remains meaningfully negative. Bulls lean on the IP moat — the direct-device 5G capability — and the MNO partnership runway. Bears point to capital intensity, launch dependencies, and Starlink's head start.
The insider register deserves attention. Rakuten's Mikitani sold a combined $270 million of stock across April 14 and 15 alone — 3.04 million shares at an average above $89. That is now confirmed as a sale at prices very close to where ASTS is trading this week. The CFO sold $2.1 million worth in early May. The CEO, COO, president and CTO all filed sales in March. Over 90 days, the net insider selling totals roughly $287 million in value. None of these were purchases. The scale of Rakuten's exit in particular is notable — it is no longer a passive reduction; combined across both days it represents a disposal worth more than three times the company's trailing quarterly revenue base and amounts to one of the largest single-holder exits in the stock's recent history.
The next confirmed earnings event is June 12. The most recent print on May 11 saw the stock fall 2.8% on the day before rallying 15.7% over the following five sessions — a pattern that has rewarded buyers of the post-print dip. Peers GSAT and IRDM were flat to modestly positive on the week at -1.1% and +4.6% respectively, meaning the ASTS move was almost entirely idiosyncratic. Whether the divergence between a bullish options market, elevated short interest, and a net-selling insider register resolves before or after the June 12 print is the central question heading into the final weeks of May.
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