Ondas ($ONDS) Stock Hub 2026: Record Q2 Revenue, a $525 to $550 Million Target and the New U.S. Drone Tariff Policy

01 What the second quarter 2026 report actually said

Verified through August 14, 2026: Ondas reported second-quarter results before the open and held its call at 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time. Revenue was $83.772 million against $50.122 million in the first quarter and $6.273 million a year earlier, which is 67% sequential growth and more than a thirteenfold year-on-year increase. On a pro forma organic basis, assuming the current portfolio had been owned in both periods, the company put year-on-year growth at 85%. The full-year revenue target was raised to $525 million to $550 million and third-quarter revenue was guided to $140 million to $155 million.

Everything below the revenue line moved the other way. Gross margin fell to 43.1% from 49.2% in the first quarter and 53.1% a year earlier, which the company attributed to the amortisation of capitalised intellectual property; on an adjusted basis it reported gross profit of $42.3 million at a 50.4% margin. Operating expenses reached $199.077 million, equal to 237.6% of revenue against 134.3% in the first quarter, and the operating loss widened to $162.946 million from $42.671 million. The adjusted EBITDA loss widened to $50.629 million from $10.877 million; the previous guidance had pointed to elevated but not escalating losses, and the company now frames the first half as a front-loading of expense ahead of the second-half ramp.

The composition of that expense line matters more than its size. The reconciliation splits the $199.077 million into $93.244 million of adjusted cash operating expense and $105.833 million of everything else, and the second figure breaks down exactly: $67.651 million of stock-based compensation, $19.234 million from the change in fair value of contingent consideration, $13.963 million of amortisation, $4.414 million of transaction-related expense and $0.571 million of depreciation. The company’s prose describes that $105.8 million as non-cash, which is not quite the whole story: the $4.4 million of transaction costs sits inside it and is a cash outlay. The same prose gives adjusted cash operating expense as $93.3 million while the reconciliation table gives $93.244 million; the table is the figure used here.

Stock-based compensation deserves its own line because of the scale. Inside operating expenses it was $67.651 million, equal to 80.8% of the quarter’s revenue. Counting the portion recorded in cost of goods sold as well, total stock-based compensation was $69.094 million, or 82.5% of revenue, against $19.659 million and 39.2% on the same total basis in the first quarter. The company attributes the step up to the vesting of equity awards granted to key executives.

Net loss was $89.696 million, or $88.587 million attributable to Ondas stockholders, against net income of $361.251 million in the first quarter. That swing is not an operating event. Total other income was $44.197 million in the second quarter and $448.365 million across the six months, dominated by non-cash remeasurement of the warrants issued alongside the October 2025 and January 2026 equity raises, plus $29 million of interest and investment income in the quarter. The company states plainly that these marks “can create significant volatility in reported earnings that are unrelated to the Company’s core operating performance, cash flows, or the economic terms of the warrants”. Basic loss per share was $0.18 and diluted loss per share $0.19, on 500.7 million weighted average basic shares against 150.7 million a year earlier.

The order book is where the case is strongest. Ondas captured approximately $175 million of new orders during the quarter and a further $105 million in the third quarter through August 10. Reported backlog was approximately $613 million at June 30 against $68 million at the end of 2025; including DZYNE, which closed on July 2, and Cyberhawk, which closed on August 10, pro forma backlog was approximately $757 million, up from $457 million pro forma at the end of the first quarter. Cash, restricted cash and short-term investments totalled $1,392.965 million at June 30, of which approximately $325 million has since been spent closing the two acquisitions.

Direct links: the second-quarter results release furnished on August 13, 2026 · Ondas press release archive · Ondas filings on EDGAR.

02 Executive summary

Ondas is no longer the company most retail screeners still describe. Until the start of 2026 it was a two-part business: Ondas Networks, a private wireless equipment vendor selling the FullMAX software-defined radio platform on the IEEE 802.16t standard mainly to North American freight rail, and Ondas Autonomous Systems, a collection of drone and counter-drone assets built around American Robotics, Airobotics and the Optimus and Iron Drone Raider products. In twenty months it has raised well over a billion dollars, changed its name from Ondas Holdings Inc. to Ondas Inc., executed a rapid acquisition program, lost control of Ondas Networks, and rebuilt itself as a single-segment autonomous defense, security and critical-infrastructure intelligence company headquartered in West Palm Beach, Florida.

The scale of the change is easiest to see in four numbers taken directly from the filings. Revenue for the full year 2024 was $7.19 million. Revenue for the second quarter of 2026 alone was $83.77 million, 13.4 times the same quarter of 2025 and 67% above the first quarter. Backlog went from $68 million at the end of 2025 to $613 million reported at June 30, 2026. The full-year 2026 revenue target, raised five times since January, now stands at $525 to $550 million.

Nothing about that trajectory is organic in the ordinary sense: it is the arithmetic of a company that spent roughly a billion dollars of freshly raised equity buying revenue, and then issued a great deal more stock as consideration on top of the cash. The company supplies the organic comparison itself, and it is not trivial either: on a pro forma basis, treating the current portfolio as owned in both periods, it puts second quarter growth at 85% year over year.

The share price has not followed. Shares closed at $9.77 on August 12, 2026, the session before the results, against the $16.45 at which institutional investors bought into the January 2026 registered direct offering, and against $9.76 at the end of 2025. The warrants attached to that offering carry a $28.00 exercise price.

Three categories deserve to be kept apart, because commentary around this stock routinely blends them. First, what is reported: the $83.77 million of second-quarter revenue, the 43.1% gross margin, the $162.95 million operating loss, the $1,393.0 million of cash, restricted cash and short-term investments. Second, what is contracted: $613 million of reported backlog, $175 million of orders captured in the quarter and $105 million more in the third quarter to August 10, and individual awards with disclosed values such as the $52.9 million Lethal Unmanned Strike order of July. Third, what is targeted, pro forma or optional: the $525 to $550 million revenue goal, the $757 million pro forma backlog, the $982 million U.S. Army loitering-munition contract vehicle in which the acquired Mistral business participates, and the NASA stratospheric IDIQ whose ceiling was raised from $45 million to $395 million. The third category is the one most often priced as though it belonged in the first.

03 Market Data And Peer Comparison

Price figures below are based on the completed session of Wednesday, August 12, 2026, the last close before the second-quarter report. Float, ownership, short interest, average volume and performance are from Finviz, read on August 13, 2026. Company financial figures come from SEC filings and company releases, each carrying its own reference date. Performance figures are computed from the closing series of the same provider against named base dates: August 5 for the week, July 13 for the month, May 12 for the quarter, February 12 for the half year, December 31, 2025 for the year to date and August 12, 2025 for the year.

Peer comparison, all figures at the August 12, 2026 close

The twelve-month gain of 127.74% against a year-to-date move of 0.10% places the whole of the re-rating in the second half of 2025, when the capital that funded the acquisition sequence was raised. Since then the shares have de-rated through the acquisition programme rather than against it, which is the pattern of a market waiting for the transactions to show up in results. The first reaction to the second-quarter report fits that pattern: the shares opened lower on August 13 despite record revenue and a raised full-year target, with the widened adjusted EBITDA loss and the implied fourth-quarter step the most likely explanations.

On analyst coverage the honest position is a narrow one. Individual houses, ratings and note dates were not verified for this update, so neither a coverage table nor a consensus target is carried. A consensus figure without named notes behind it is a market-data point, not research, and it is neither a company figure nor a Merlintrader forecast.

04 U.S. drone tariffs and verified developments through August 14, 2026

August 13 Section 232 drone tariffs: what the policy actually does

On August 13, 2026, the White House signed a Section 232 proclamation covering imports of unmanned aircraft systems and UAS components. This is a trade and industrial-policy action, not an Ondas contract and not an automatic earnings benefit. The policy is intended to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign drone supply chains after the Commerce Department concluded that even many U.S.-assembled commercial drones rely on overseas motors, electronic speed controllers, lithium-ion batteries, docking stations and other critical inputs. The new regime therefore creates two effects at the same time: a price and procurement umbrella for products that qualify as domestic, and a potentially material increase in the landed cost of foreign-origin aircraft and components.

The legal text matters more than the headline. The highest rate is not a blanket 100% duty on every drone. It applies to specified sensitive categories and Annex I items, while smaller UAS and specified Annex II or Annex III items carry different treatment. Country-of-origin rules, HTS classification, component certification, Blue UAS or FCC status and any approved onshoring plan can change the effective rate or date for a particular product.

The duties generally stack on top of other applicable duties, taxes and fees and continue unless expressly reduced, modified or terminated. Commerce can add more components on a rolling basis, must review the situation and report within 120 days, and still has to implement certification, product-list and onshoring procedures. That means the economic exposure will remain partly unsettled even after the September 3 start date.

The Ondas read-through is mixed, not a clean tariff winner

The initial market reaction treated U.S.-listed drone companies as a group beneficiary. That is directionally understandable: higher landed prices for foreign aircraft and a federal push toward domestic capacity can improve the competitive position of suppliers with U.S. manufacturing, U.S. government routes and compliant products. Ondas now owns several assets that fit that strategic narrative. But Ondas is also a multinational roll-up with Israeli, British, German, Indian and Australian exposure, and the company itself warned in its 2025 Form 10-K that tariffs on imported drone components could raise costs, disrupt sourcing, force alternative suppliers or manufacturing relocation and affect commercial execution.

Where the upside can show up, and where the cost can show up

Revenue opportunity. If competing imported systems become 25% or 100% more expensive while Ondas can offer qualifying U.S.-origin products, the company can gain a relative-price advantage, support higher domestic utilisation and participate in procurement that increasingly favours secure U.S. supply chains. DZYNE, American Robotics and Mistral are the clearest strategic read-throughs. The June 2025 executive order on American drone dominance already directed agencies to support U.S.-manufactured UAS, exports and the domestic industrial base; the August 2026 proclamation turns that policy direction into a border cost and an onshoring incentive.

Gross-margin and working-capital risk. The same tariff can raise the cost of aircraft, thermal payloads, docks, propulsion, batteries, electronics and replacement parts used by Ondas units. If a contract is fixed-price or does not permit tariff pass-through, Ondas may absorb the increase. Even where price can be passed through, qualifying new suppliers, redesigning products, certifying origin and carrying more inventory can use cash and delay delivery. That distinction matters after Q2 gross margin fell to 43.1% and management guided to a very steep second-half revenue ramp.

Competitive intensity. This is not an Ondas-specific subsidy. The same umbrella can support AeroVironment, Red Cat, Kratos, Unusual Machines and other U.S. drone or component companies, while also encouraging new entrants and supplier investment. A larger domestic market may expand Ondas opportunities, but it does not grant exclusivity or prove that the company will capture procurement share.

The four disclosures that now matter most

• Country of origin and HTS mapping: the applicable treatment for Optimus, its airbase, thermal payloads, DZYNE aircraft, Rotron propulsion and counter-UAS hardware, by product configuration.
• Imported bill of materials: the percentage of motors, batteries, controllers, sensors, radios, docks and other critical inputs sourced outside the United States and the countries involved.
• Relief eligibility: which products qualify for the Blue UAS or FCC 180-day date and whether Ondas will submit an onshoring plan for a new or expanded U.S. facility before the January 20, 2029 construction deadline.
• Contract economics: which customer agreements permit tariff pass-through and how management expects the policy to affect gross margin, inventory and delivery timing in the third and fourth quarters.

05 Five quarters that explain the transformation

Every number in the charts below is taken from Ondas quarterly and annual filings or from the earnings releases furnished on Form 8-K. Where a quarter is not separately reported, it has been derived by subtraction from the year-to-date figures, and the derivation is stated in the caption.

06 What Ondas actually owns today

Ondas describes itself as a provider of autonomous systems, robotics and mission-critical technologies for defense, homeland security, public safety, critical infrastructure and industrial markets. Since the deconsolidation of Ondas Networks in January the company reports as one operating and reportable segment, with the chief executive officer as chief operating decision maker reviewing financial information on a consolidated basis. That change matters for anyone modelling the business: there is no longer a segment table splitting autonomous systems from networks, only a disaggregation of revenue by type, timing and geography.

Ondas Autonomous Systems and the product families

The original aerial franchise sits inside Airobotics and American Robotics. Optimus is a fully autonomous aerial platform for persistent, repeatable missions including intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, monitoring, inspection and site security, supported by automated mission planning, payload integration and sustainment services. The company announced during the first quarter that Optimus had been approved for rapid federal procurement through the Defense Contract Management Agency Blue UAS Cleared List.

Iron Drone Raider, also from Airobotics, is a fully autonomous interceptor designed to neutralize small hostile drones threatening critical assets. It sits at the kinetic end of a layered counter-drone architecture: detection and identification through Sentrycs and its Cyber-over-RF protocol-manipulation approach, mitigation through cyber takeover, and defeat through Iron Drone interception or, after the DZYNE transaction, the IonStrike interceptor and the Dronebuster handheld effector.

Around that core sit ground robotics through Roboteam and Apeiro Motion, sensing through Insight, airborne missile-defense and counter-drone systems through Bird Aerosystems, engineering and demining equipment through 4M Defense and Indo Earth Moving, loitering munitions and propulsion through Rotron Aerospace in the United Kingdom, defense software through Omnisys in Israel, and prime-contractor status in the United States through Mistral.

Ondas Sentinel: the new U.S. division

Announced alongside the DZYNE acquisition on July 6, 2026, Ondas Sentinel initially combines World View and DZYNE. Ryan Hartman, previously chief executive of World View, leads it; Matt McCue, DZYNE’s co-founder and chief executive, is chief technology officer. The stated logic is a multi-domain ISR architecture from the stratosphere to the tactical edge: World View’s Stratollite balloons at the top, DZYNE’s long-endurance ULTRA and LEAP aircraft in the middle, Optimus and Insight ground sensors at the bottom. World View has completed more than 140 stratospheric flight operations with payloads up to 10,000 kg for customers including NASA, NOAA, the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Air Force. DZYNE also brings the Blitz Group 1 aircraft with a stated 150 km range, the Grasshopper cargo glider rated to 500 pounds, and Dronebuster, of which the company says more than 3,000 units have been deployed worldwide.

Ondas Networks, and why it is no longer in the accounts

Ondas Networks builds the FullMAX software-defined radio platform on the IEEE 802.16t standard, aimed at private wireless networks for freight rail, utilities, oil and gas and government. The rail thesis has always been the same: the Class I railroads operate four separate private wireless networks in the 160, 220, 450 and 900 MHz bands, much of the infrastructure is more than twenty years old, and the Association of American Railroads has adopted IEEE 802.16 as a standards foundation for future networks.

The last guidance given on the unit before deconsolidation was blunt: in the March 2026 release management said revenue expectations for Ondas Networks remained modest “due to the current lack of firm commitments on rail network buildout timelines.”

07 Financial position: the second quarter 2026

One caution applies to every first-quarter figure in the table below. The results release carries a full income statement for the second quarter and the six months, but for the first quarter it publishes only revenue and gross profit; every other first-quarter number here is the six-month figure less the second quarter, and the company’s own prose rounds the same amounts to one decimal place. The second quarter is the most recent reported period, and it repeats the first quarter’s central lesson in the opposite direction: the headline bottom line on this company describes the warrants, not the business. In the first quarter that produced $361.3 million of reported net income against a $42.7 million operating loss. In the second it produced an $89.7 million net loss against a $162.9 million operating loss. Neither number describes what the operating business did.

Across the six months the pattern is unmistakable. Revenue was $133.894 million, the operating loss $205.617 million, and total other income $448.365 million, which turns a quarter of a billion dollars of operating losses into $271.555 million of reported net income. In the first quarter the warrant mark alone contributed a $389.5 million gain, alongside a $51.5 million paper gain on the deconsolidation of Ondas Networks and a $46.2 million paper loss on consolidating Indo Earth Moving. In the second quarter the same mechanism produced $44.197 million of other income, of which $29 million was genuine interest and investment income on the cash pile. Adjusted EBITDA, which strips all of it out, was a loss of $50.629 million in the quarter and $61.506 million across the half.

What the August 13 print answered

• Sequential revenue against $50.12 million: $83.772 million, up 67%. The quarter carried full contributions from World View and Mistral, which closed on April 1 and April 24, and a partial one from Omnisys, which closed on May 21. It carried none from DZYNE, which closed on July 2, or Cyberhawk, which closed on August 10.
• Gross margin against 49.2%: 43.1%. Inside the range management had flagged as volatile, and above the twenties printed in the third quarter of 2025. The company attributed the decline to amortisation of capitalised intellectual property and reported an adjusted gross margin of 50.4%.
• Adjusted EBITDA against a loss of $10.9 million: a loss of $50.6 million. The May release had described the second quarter as the expected peak of the loss. It was not. The company now describes the first-half losses as a front-loading of expense and guides adjusted EBITDA losses to decline sequentially from the third quarter, with adjusted EBITDA profitability at the operating platform level by the fourth quarter of 2026. It is the clearest instance of a dated company statement that the quarter did not bear out, and it belongs alongside the new timeline whenever that timeline is read.
• Operating cash outflow against $51.3 million: not disclosed. The results release contains no cash flow statement. Cash, restricted cash and short-term investments stood at $1,392.965 million at June 30, before approximately $325 million left in the third quarter to close DZYNE and Cyberhawk.
• The warrant mark: as expected, a gain. The warrant liability fell to $1,043.7 million at June 30 from $1,059.0 million at March 31, and total other income of $44.197 million turned a $162.9 million operating loss into an $89.7 million net loss. The mechanism behaved exactly as described: a lower share price reduces the fair value of out-of-the-money warrant liabilities and produces a non-cash gain that says nothing about operations.
• Backlog reported rather than pro forma: $613 million reported, $757 million pro forma. The company did not split the figure between acquired and organically won, but it did disclose $175 million of new orders captured during the quarter and a further $105 million in the third quarter through August 10.

08 The $525 to $550 million target and the arithmetic it implies

On August 13, 2026 Ondas raised its full-year 2026 revenue target to a range of $525 million to $550 million, and said the updated target now includes revenue expected from Cyberhawk during the second half. The July 6 target had been at least $525 million, itself raised from at least $390 million. Against reported 2025 revenue of $50.731 million, the new range is roughly 10.4 to 10.8 times prior-year revenue; the company put it as a greater than tenfold increase, and said that on a pro forma organic basis the midpoint equates to more than 30% year-on-year growth. Alongside it, third-quarter revenue was guided to $140 million to $155 million, which the company described as 76% sequential growth at the midpoint. That percentage compares two different companies: the third quarter contains DZYNE from July 2 and Cyberhawk from August 10, while the second quarter contained neither.

With two quarters reported and the third guided, the shape of the year is no longer a matter of assumption. The first half delivered $133.894 million. Subtracting it from the target leaves $391.1 million to $416.1 million for the second half. Subtracting the third-quarter guide as well leaves the fourth quarter carrying between roughly $236 million and $276 million. That is a minimum-to-maximum envelope built by pairing opposite ends of two company ranges, not a fourth-quarter guide: Ondas has given no indication for the fourth quarter. Against the $83.772 million just reported, that is a fourth quarter between 2.8 and 3.3 times the size of the second, and against the midpoint of the third-quarter guide it is a further step of roughly 60% to 87% in a single quarter.

The company names what is supposed to carry it: volume shipments against orders captured by Mistral under the $982 million Lethal Unmanned Strike IDIQ with the U.S. Army, deliveries of the new ULTRA and IonStrike platforms, and volume deliveries in the fourth quarter on the $140 million combat engineering vehicles programme announced earlier in the year. Those are named programmes with disclosed values rather than a general appeal to pipeline, which makes the target more testable than most. It also concentrates the risk: a slip in any one of them lands almost entirely in the fourth quarter, because there is no longer a third quarter left to absorb it.

Two further guidance statements are on the record and dated, which makes them checkable:

• Adjusted EBITDA losses are guided to decline sequentially from the third quarter of 2026, on operating leverage from revenue and gross profit growth.
• Adjusted EBITDA profitability at the operating platform level, which the company defines as Ondas Autonomous Systems plus Ondas Sentinel, was pulled forward to the fourth quarter of 2026. The previous framing had put Ondas Autonomous Systems at the first quarter of 2027, itself pulled forward from the third quarter of 2027.
• Company-wide adjusted EBITDA profitability was pulled forward to the fourth quarter of 2027, from the first quarter of 2028 guided since March.

That last date frames everything else. On the company’s own timeline Ondas expects to be loss-making on an adjusted EBITDA basis at the group level for roughly another five quarters, while carrying an operating cost base that ran at 237.6% of revenue in the second quarter. Each of these dates has now been pulled forward at least once, and the second-quarter adjusted EBITDA loss came in nearly five times wider than the previous quarter after management had described that quarter as the expected peak. Read as a series rather than one at a time, those pulled-forward dates have moved every time the quarter behind them has.

09 The 2026 deal sequence: acquisition and investment table

The strategic growth program is not a slogan; it is the entire 2026 income statement. Every figure below comes from the relevant Form 8-K, the Form 10-Q or the company press release announcing the transaction.

Two structural features run through almost all of these deals. The first is installment stock: Mistral and Omnisys are being paid in tranches of newly issued shares over weeks and years, so the eventual share count depends on the price at each issuance date, and a falling share price increases the number of shares needed to deliver a fixed dollar amount. The second is daily volume limits: sellers in the Indo, Omnisys and DZYNE transactions are capped at roughly 10% of daily trading volume, which spreads their selling out rather than removing it.

10 Capital structure, dilution and the warrant overhang

This is where the equity story is decided. The company has funded its transformation with two things: an enormous equity raise, and its own shares as acquisition currency.

The January 2026 offering

On January 12, 2026 Ondas closed a registered direct offering of 19,000,000 shares and pre-funded warrants exercisable for 41,790,274 shares, each unit priced at $16.45 and each accompanied by warrants to purchase two further shares. That produced 121,580,548 common warrants at a $28.00 exercise price, immediately exercisable and expiring seven years from issuance. Gross proceeds were $999,996,000; after $40.0 million of placement-agent discounts and commissions and $0.9 million of other costs, net proceeds were $959.1 million. The pre-funded warrants had been fully exercised by March 31, 2026.

Because share settlement of the 2026 common warrants is not within the company’s control, they are classified as a liability and remeasured every quarter through the income statement. The initial fair value was $1,194 million and the company recognised a $234.9 million loss at issuance. The $389.5 million gain in the first quarter was the reversal of part of that mark, not an operating event, and the second quarter produced a further, smaller gain as the liability fell to $1,043.7 million. The company said as much itself in the results release: these marks “can create significant volatility in reported earnings that are unrelated to the Company’s core operating performance, cash flows, or the economic terms of the warrants”. As long as these warrants exist, reported net income will be a function of the share price rather than of the business, and the six-month figure of $271.555 million of net income against a $205.617 million operating loss is the clearest illustration of that.

The full overhang

The overhang is not evenly dangerous. The 196.3 million warrants are struck at a weighted average of $24.90 against an August 12 close of $9.77: deeply out of the money, diluting nobody unless the stock roughly triples, but sitting on the balance sheet as a billion-dollar liability that swings reported earnings around. The options and restricted stock units are different: options carried a $5.68 average strike at March 31 and remain in the money, and $210.6 million of unrecognised restricted-stock-unit expense plus $82.9 million of unrecognised option expense was still to flow through the income statement over roughly the next 2.7 to 2.8 years. The Cyberhawk closing adds a further 1.602 million RSUs and 1.290 million options at $9.11 under inducement awards. The second quarter shows what that pipeline costs when it vests. Stock-based compensation inside operating expenses was $67.651 million, equal to 80.8% of revenue; counting the portion in cost of goods sold as well, total stock-based compensation was $69.094 million, or 82.5% of revenue, against $19.659 million and 39.2% on the same total basis in the first quarter. The company attributes the step up to the vesting of awards granted to key executives.

Two further authorizations were granted at the annual meeting on May 28, 2026: the authorized share count rose from 800,000,000 to 1,200,000,000, and the 2021 Stock Incentive Plan pool rose from 61,000,000 to 81,000,000 shares. Neither is dilution by itself. Both remove the ceiling that would otherwise force a shareholder vote before the next tranche of acquisition stock is issued.

Debt is not the issue

For a company with this much equity activity, the borrowings are trivial. At June 30, 2026 the balance sheet carried $1.562 million of current notes payable, $0.194 million non-current, $0.718 million of current convertible notes and $3.934 million of non-current convertible notes: about $6.4 million in total, with the $1.5 million and $3.5 million of related-party notes outstanding at the end of 2025 cleared. What the balance sheet does carry, besides the warrant liability, is $134.1 million of accrued purchase and contingent consideration, $17.2 million current and $116.9 million non-current. The line combines amounts already owed with earn-outs that are still conditional, and the release does not split the two, so the whole figure should not be read as contingent. That line is now also an income-statement item: its remeasurement cost $19.234 million in the second quarter, and from this quarter the company excludes those movements from adjusted EBITDA and adjusted cash operating expense, a definitional change it disclosed and which did not restate prior periods because no such gains or losses had been recognised before.

11 Orders, contracts and the difference between a purchase order and a ceiling

Ondas has published a steady rhythm of order announcements through 2026. Read carefully, they fall into three very different classes, and the difference matters for anyone trying to convert them into revenue.

Class one: signed orders with a disclosed value

• $6.9 million, Australian Department of Defence, July 20, 2026, for DTIM Single Operator Counter-sUAS Kits, secured with distributor HIFraser and formally awarded to DZYNE. The company states that production capacity is already scaled and deliveries will begin.
• $4.8 million, U.S. Naval Forces Southern Command, announced June 2, 2026, for World View to act as high-altitude balloon provider on a maritime domain awareness program under an SMX-led effort. The contract covers an initial three-month mission period.

These are the only two individually quantified, named-customer awards in the recent sequence. Both are small relative to the revenue target, and both are real.

Class two: aggregate order totals without customer detail

• More than $110 million of second-quarter-to-date orders as of May 29, including more than $30 million in May.
• More than $40 million in June, taking the second quarter above $150 million in total.
• $70 million over the four weeks to July 22, spanning ground systems, border security, counter-UAS, ISR and precision-strike products, and including the $6.9 million Australian award.
• About $220 million of aggregated awards described in the May earnings release as captured by 4M Defense and Indo Earth to start 2026, with 4M’s border-infrastructure programs described separately as a cumulative opportunity exceeding $80 million.

These aggregates are a credible directional signal and are consistent with backlog moving from $68.3 million to $457 million. They are not verifiable line by line, they mix orders with awards, and the $220 million figure is described as an opportunity in one sentence and as captured in another. They are evidence of momentum, not a bookings schedule.

Class three: ceilings, collaborations and programs with no disclosed economics

• The $982 million U.S. Army IDIQ program for loitering munitions in which Mistral participates, cited in the May earnings release as providing long-term visibility. An indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity vehicle is a ceiling shared among awardees, not an order; nothing is owed until a task order is funded.
• The Lockheed Martin Sanctum collaboration announced June 23, 2026. Integration of Sentrycs technology into a prime’s architecture is a genuine qualification event and a genuine channel. It is not a purchase order and no value, volume or timeline was disclosed.
• The Palantir Technologies partnership announced March 12, 2026, covering access to Palantir’s AIP suite and the jointly developed SkyWeaver platform. No economics have been disclosed in any filing.
• The Blue UAS Cleared List approval for the Optimus drone, which removes a procurement obstacle for U.S. federal buyers but does not create demand; ONBERG Autonomous Systems, the 51%-owned German joint venture announced March 18, 2026, with no disclosed capital commitment or revenue expectation; and the FPF Defense investment of July 24, 2026, a minority stake of undisclosed size in a company still developing its interceptor.

The distinction is not academic. In the first quarter, $21.6 million of the $50.1 million of revenue came from Israel, $12.1 million from Europe, $12.0 million from Asia excluding named markets, and only $3.3 million, or 6.6%, from North America. The U.S. programs that dominate the narrative contributed almost nothing to reported revenue in the last fully disclosed quarter. That is precisely what Ondas Sentinel, Mistral’s prime-contractor position and the DZYNE customer base are meant to change, and the August 13 geography table is the first place that change would become visible.

12 Where the revenue comes from

The first quarter disaggregation, taken from Note 3 of the Form 10-Q, is the clearest picture available of the shape of the business before the April, May and July acquisitions.

Three things follow. The revenue base is heavily Israeli and European, consistent with an acquisition list dominated by Israeli companies: Bird Aerosystems, 4M Defense, Indo Earth Moving, Sentrycs, Roboteam, Insight and Omnisys. It is overwhelmingly hardware, at 76.5% product revenue and 80.9% recognized at a point in time, which is the structural reason gross margin swings so hard between quarters. The software and recurring-revenue element that could smooth this profile has now been acquired: Cyberhawk closed on August 10 and was described in the June transaction materials as carrying about 95% recurring revenue, more than $45 million of forecast revenue for its fiscal year ending March 2027 and a $95 million backlog. None of that appears in the first-quarter accounts, and the July 6 $525 million 2026 target explicitly excluded Cyberhawk.

Bird Aerosystems, acquired on March 11, contributed $10.6 million of revenue and $2.0 million of net income in the twenty days it was owned during the quarter, which is disclosed in the acquisition note. Rotron contributed $331 thousand of revenue and a $12 thousand net loss. Those two disclosures are the only clean read on how much of the quarter came from the newest assets.

13 Management, governance and the pace of change

Eric A. Brock is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer and has been the constant through the transformation. Neil Laird is Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer, on a base salary raised to $375,000 effective January 1, 2026 plus a $200,000 discretionary bonus for 2025. Patrick Huston is Chief Operating Officer, General Counsel and Secretary. Oshri Lugassy is Co-Chief Executive Officer of Ondas Autonomous Systems, Mark Green is Global Head of Corporate Development and M&A, Ryan Hartman leads Ondas Sentinel with Matt McCue as chief technology officer, and David Barnea joined on August 3, 2026 as Global President and Chairman of Ondas Defense Ltd.

The board is small. Four directors were elected at the May 28, 2026 annual meeting: Eric A. Brock, Richard M. Cohen, Randall P. Seidl and Jaspreet Sood. For a company that has completed a rapid succession of acquisitions and investments, carries $694 million of goodwill and intangibles on the March 31 balance sheet and has increased its authorized share count by 400 million shares, a four-person board with one executive member is a thin structure for the load.

Two compensation items are large enough to be material to shareholders:

• On February 11, 2026 the compensation committee approved a restricted stock unit award to Eric Brock of 13.5 million shares, described in the Form 8-K as approximately 3.0% of the shares then outstanding. It vests over three years, with 4,500,000 units on June 1, 2026 and 1,800,000 on each of five subsequent dates through March 10, 2029.
• In connection with the DZYNE closing the company granted inducement awards to 255 newly hired employees under the Nasdaq Rule 5635(c)(4) exception: 500,000 restricted stock units and options over 1,500,000 shares at a $7.92 exercise price, all vesting over three years.

The auditor has changed. On January 17, 2026 the audit committee approved the dismissal of Rosenberg Rich Baker Berman, P.A. effective on completion of the 2025 audit, and stockholders ratified BDO USA, P.C. for 2026 at the May 28 annual meeting. Moving from a small regional firm to a national one is the ordinary consequence of a balance sheet going from $1.1 billion to $2.4 billion in a quarter.

Headcount is the last governance metric worth stating. The 2025 Form 10-K reported approximately 459 full-time and 36 part-time employees at December 31, 2025. Since then the company has added Bird Aerosystems, Rotron, Indo Earth Moving, World View, Mistral, Omnisys and DZYNE, the last of which alone brought 255 newly hired employees receiving inducement grants. The August 10 Cyberhawk closing added another 47 newly hired employees receiving inducement awards. Integration risk across the United States, the United Kingdom, Israel and Germany on that scale is not a theoretical risk-factor item.

14 Ownership, Short Interest And Retail Sentiment

Institutional ownership stands at 45.76% and insider ownership at 7.54% on the Finviz Elite reading of August 13, 2026. Three Schedule 13G filings in the recent window give the named detail:

The BlackRock and Vanguard positions are passive, index-driven holdings whose arrival is a mechanical consequence of the market capitalization crossing index thresholds. The Hirsch filing is different: it is dated July 2, 2026, the day the DZYNE transaction closed, and Hirsch is associated with Highlander Partners, the majority owner of DZYNE, whose chief executive publicly described taking the majority of the consideration in Ondas equity as an expression of conviction. That position is subject to the six-month lock-up on 45 million of the 85 million shares and to the 10% daily-volume selling limit.

Retail sentiment on ONDS is loud and at times detached from the filings; the recurring themes through July were the distance from the 2026 highs, the persistent short interest above 30%, and enthusiasm around the DZYNE deal and the Palantir association. Retail commentary is non-professional opinion and is not a source of fact.

The block below is a snapshot of the Stocktwits flow, with its date. These are opinions of retail traders and non-professional investors, not analyst research, and they measure attention and how one-sided positioning has become rather than anything about the business.

15 Catalysts to monitor

The Merlintrader Free Catalyst Calendar lists the dated events across the sector in one place.

16 The two cases, stated as fairly as possible

Ondas raised roughly a billion dollars at the top of a valuation window and spent it buying operating businesses with real revenue, real customers and, in DZYNE’s case, positive EBITDA. That is the correct sequence: raise when you can, deploy into cash flow. Revenue went from $7.2 million in 2024 to $50.7 million in 2025 to $50.1 million in a single quarter, and backlog went from $23.3 million in November 2025 to $457 million pro forma at the end of March.

The demand backdrop is not speculative. Counter-drone procurement is one of the fastest-moving lines in allied defense budgets, and Ondas now owns detection, cyber mitigation, kinetic interception and handheld defeat in a single portfolio, with a Lockheed Martin integration and a Blue UAS listing as third-party validation. Ondas Sentinel and Mistral’s prime-contractor status are a credible route into the U.S. programs that have so far contributed 6.6% of revenue.

The balance sheet is genuinely strong: roughly $1.07 billion of cash and investments after the $325 million the company says it spent closing DZYNE and Cyberhawk in the third quarter, against a first-quarter operating outflow of $51.3 million, the last one disclosed, and $29 million of interest and investment income in the second quarter alone. Few companies at this stage of a build-out have that much runway, and with 44.60% of the float short, evidence of the second-half ramp arriving on schedule would land on an unusually crowded position.

The tariff catalyst strengthens this case only conditionally. If DZYNE, American Robotics and Mistral can supply U.S.-origin systems while foreign competitors absorb 25% or 100% duties, Ondas gains relative-price and procurement leverage. Blue UAS status and a possible approved onshoring plan can add further protection. That is strategic optionality; it becomes financial evidence only when the company discloses eligible products, bid wins, price realisation and margin.

Almost none of the growth is organic. The revenue line has been bought, and it has been bought partly with stock issued at prices that have not held. The share count has gone from 93 million to roughly 570 million in nineteen months, with a further 45 million contractually due in January 2027 and installment stock still being delivered to the Mistral and Omnisys sellers, where a lower share price means more shares.

The operating economics have not improved with scale. Operating expenses ran at 134% of revenue in the first quarter; the adjusted EBITDA loss widened year on year; and company-wide adjusted EBITDA profitability is still guided to the first quarter of 2028. A rapid succession of acquisitions across multiple countries is a formidable integration load for a company with a four-person board, a newly appointed auditor and 459 employees at the last year-end count before the 2026 buying spree.

The reported earnings are not usable. A $361 million net income built on a $389 million warrant mark, a $51 million deconsolidation gain and a $46 million variable-interest-entity loss says nothing about the business, and the same mechanism will produce whatever number the share price dictates in August. Meanwhile $694 million of goodwill and intangibles, $128 million of accrued and contingent consideration and up to $200 million of undrawn earn-outs across the Indo and Omnisys deals sit against a business that has never generated positive operating cash flow. And the gap is large: reaching the $525 million target requires at least $474.9 million across the final three quarters against $50.1 million delivered in the first, with the composition of that target not reconcilable from public disclosure.

The same tariff policy also fits the sceptical case. Airobotics has Israeli roots, Optimus is a drone-in-a-box system and the proclamation explicitly places docking stations and thermal-imager configurations in the 100% category. Israel is not named for a preferential cap, while U.S.-assembled products may still contain foreign motors, batteries, controllers and sensors. Without product-origin, bill-of-materials and pass-through disclosure, a demand tailwind can arrive together with gross-margin pressure and working-capital needs.

17 Scenario framework

The table below is an analytical framework for organizing what the third and fourth quarters of 2026 could show, now that the second quarter is reported. It is not a forecast, not a recommendation and not a set of probabilities. Each row states what would have to be observed, not what is expected.

18 Merlintrader bottom line

Ondas has done something unusual and, on its own terms, coherent: it converted a stock-price re-rating into roughly a billion dollars of cash and turned that cash into a portfolio of operating defense businesses across four countries in a year. The second quarter is the first period in which the assembled group is visible from the outside, and the top line answered the first question decisively. Revenue of $83.77 million is 13.4 times the same quarter of 2025 and 67% above the first quarter, backlog moved from $68 million at the end of 2025 to $613 million reported and $757 million pro forma, and the full-year target went up rather than down, to $525 to $550 million.

What has not been demonstrated is that the assembled whole works better than the parts. Operating expenses were 237.6% of revenue in the quarter, and even on the company’s own adjusted cash measure they were 111.3%. Stock-based compensation alone was $69.09 million against $83.77 million of revenue. The adjusted EBITDA loss did not peak in the first quarter as management had indicated: it went from $10.88 million to $50.63 million. The company’s answer is that this is front-loaded investment ahead of the second-half ramp, and it has attached dates to that answer by pulling the profitability timeline forward rather than pushing it back, to the fourth quarter of 2026 at the operating-platform level and the fourth quarter of 2027 for the group.

The arithmetic of the target is now precise and checkable. First-half revenue was $133.89 million, so the low end of the range needs $391.11 million in the second half and the high end $416.11 million. Third quarter guidance of $140 to $155 million leaves between $236 million and $276 million for the fourth quarter, which would be a step of roughly 60% to 80% on the third. That single number is what the next two prints are about.

Two things should be set aside when reading this company. The reported net income line is dominated by the remeasurement of a $1,043.7 million warrant liability and says nothing about operations: it produced $271.56 million of net income across a half year in which the operating loss was $205.62 million. And the share count is the real price list: 529,838,610 shares at June 30 against 380,763,481 at the end of 2025, with 44,999,998 more contractually due to the DZYNE sellers on January 4, 2027.

For broader catalyst tracking across the space, defense and AI complex, the Merlintrader Free Catalyst Calendar lists the dated events for the sector.

The tariff proclamation changes the framework, not the proof burden. It can improve the U.S. opportunity set for Ondas Sentinel, DZYNE, American Robotics and Mistral, but Ondas is not a pure domestic manufacturer and has not quantified sourcing, origin or pass-through. The next useful evidence is not a sector share-price reaction; it is a company bridge showing which SKUs qualify, which inputs become more expensive, whether Blue UAS or onshoring relief applies and what the net effect is on Q3 and Q4 gross margin.

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