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Dear Reader, |
I started rating the safety of banks in the early '70s. |
Over the last 50+ years, I've warned my readers about the bank failures of the 1980s and 1990s, the Dot-Com Bust, the 2008 housing collapse and more. |
But today, I'm writing to you with a different kind of warning. One that genuinely frightens me. |
This time, the threat to your money isn't coming from reckless Wall Street bankers. It's coming directly from the Federal Reserve itself. |
Through a program outlined in the Federal Reserve Docket No. OP-1670 - known as "FedNow" - the government is quietly rewiring the entire American banking system. |
Simply stated, the Fed is building a centralized hub that will process every transaction in the U.S. ... giving it the ability to track every transfer, bill pay, purchase or donation you make in real time. |
That, in turn, could give them unprecedented power to cut off your access to your savings if they decide you're not in "compliance" with whatever their policy agenda dictates at the time. |
Or maybe even confiscate your savings when the need arises like it happened in Cyprus in 2013. |
In all my decades studying the U.S. economy and banking system, I've never seen anything as scary as this. |
If you value your financial privacy... |
If you believe your money belongs to you and not Washington ... |
Now's the time to act. |
I've spent the last few months putting together 4 specific, steps to "Fed-proof" your accounts. |
I urge you to take this threat seriously. |
Review these 4 steps immediately, right here. |
Good luck and God bless!
Martin D. Weiss, PhD
Weiss Ratings Founder |
P.S. The Fed is counting on the fact that ordinary Americans won't read a 93-page document until it's too late. I've read it and that's why I'm begging you to act while you still can. Get the 4 "Fed-proof" steps right now. |
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BONUS ARTICLE |
Is ONDS Becoming a Real Defense Platform—or Just a Hot Trade? |
Every so often, a small-cap defense stock stops acting like a story and starts acting like a bid. |
That is what is happening with Ondas right now. |
The market is not chasing ONDS because of one nice press release or one vague AI headline. It is chasing it because management just handed investors a very different growth profile than the one they were using even a few weeks ago. Ondas now says it expects at least $375 million of 2026 revenue, versus preliminary 2025 revenue of $49.7 million to $50.7 million, and that new target came just days after the company reiterated its older $170 million to $180 million 2026 outlook before the impact of new acquisitions. |
That is not a tweak. |
That is a rewrite. |
Then came the Street response. Needham's Austin Bohlig raised his price target to $23 from $17, a 35% increase, while maintaining a Buy rating. Other published targets already on the board included $25 from H.C. Wainwright, $19 from Lake Street, $18 from Stifel, and $16 from Oppenheimer, with recent third-party summaries showing a roughly $20.2 average target among five tracked analysts. |
Then Ondas added another major piece: a definitive agreement to acquire World View Enterprises, folding high-altitude stratospheric ISR into its drone, counter-drone, and robotic systems stack. Ondas says World View has completed more than 140 stratospheric flight operations, with customers including NASA, NOAA, the U.S. Department of War, and the U.S. Air Force. |
That is why ONDS is trending. |
The market thinks this may no longer be "just a drone company." |
It may be trying to become a multi-domain defense intelligence platform. |
That is a much bigger story. |
The only question is whether the fundamentals are finally catching up to the stock—or whether the stock is outrunning the execution. |
Scoreboard: What Actually Happened |
Let's start with the hard numbers. |
Ondas' preliminary Q4 2025 revenue came in at $29.1 million to $30.1 million, ahead of prior guidance of $27 million to $29 million. Full-year 2025 revenue is expected at $49.7 million to $50.7 million, above prior guidance of $47.6 million to $49.6 million. |
That matters because it confirms the business was already accelerating before the latest strategic pivot. |
But the bigger number is the new one: the company now says 2026 revenue should be at least $375 million, according to its earnings-related announcement and press coverage, versus the prior standalone 2026 outlook of $170 million to $180 million. |
If Ondas reaches the low end of that new target, it would imply roughly: |
about 7.4x 2025 revenue at the $50.7 million level, and a little more than 2x the prior 2026 guidance ceiling of $180 million.
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On liquidity, Ondas said it had about $551 million of cash and equivalents as of December 31, 2025, and then raised roughly $1 billion on January 12, 2026. |
On backlog, Barron's reported the company had a $68.3 million order backlog, and management guided Q1 2026 revenue to $38 million to $40 million, which would represent about 820% year-over-year growth. |
And on the stock itself, ONDS was recently trading around $10.90, giving it a market cap of roughly $2.01 billion. |
Ondas Inc. (ONDS) |
$10.90 |
+$0.83(+8.25%)Today |
$10.95+$0.05(+0.46%)Pre-Market |
1D5D1M6MYTD1Y5Ymax |
That gives us the first clean valuation anchor: at a $2.01 billion market cap and a $375 million 2026 revenue target, the stock is trading at roughly 5.4x forward sales on management's new minimum target. Based on the old $170 million to $180 million standalone guide, it would have been closer to roughly 11x to 12x forward sales. That is a massive change in the implied revenue math. |
The Real Reason the Stock Is Moving |
The market is reacting to three things at once. |
1. The revenue story just got much bigger |
A company that looked like a fast-growing but still relatively small defense robotics name is now presenting itself as a business with a credible path toward $375 million-plus in 2026 revenue. That is a completely different lens for valuat |
2. The platform story got broader |
Before this week, Ondas was already assembling an autonomy-and-defense stack through its autonomous systems portfolio, including drones, counter-UAS technologies, robotic ground systems, and mission-critical communications. The World View acquisition adds stratospheric persistence and wide-area sensing, letting the company pitch a layered intelligence architecture across **stratosphere, air, and lan |
3. The Street is starting to believe the "system of systems" pitch |
Needham's target hike to $23 did not happen in a vacuum. Earlier in the year, multiple firms had already raised targets after Ondas' investor-day guidance shift, including $25, $19, $18, and $16 targets from other firms. That kind of stack of upgrades tells you the market is not treating this as a meme move al |
In plain English: the stock is moving because investors think Ondas is graduating from "interesting niche defense tech" to "scaled ISR and autonomy consolidator." |
That is a much more valuable category—if the company can deliver. |
What Ondas Actually Is Becoming |
This is the part investors need to understand clearly. |
Ondas is no longer selling itself as a single-product drone company. The company says its Ondas Autonomous Systems unit includes: |
autonomous aerial platforms, robotic ground systems, counter-drone technologies, advanced propulsion and unmanned aircraft capabilities, autonomous engineering and demining capabilities, and integrated sensing systems for defense, security, and critical infrastructure
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Now add World View. |
World View brings Stratollite high-altitude platforms, stratospheric ISR, long-endurance sensing, and a track record of 140-plus flight operations. Ondas says the combined company will connect persistent detection, tactical collection, AI-enabled data fusion, and autonomous response in a single mission workf |
That is a much more interesting defense story than "one more drone company." |
It means Ondas is trying to occupy a specific lane in modern military tech: |
persistent sensing + autonomy + AI-driven decision workflow + response |
That lane is attractive because defense customers increasingly want systems that can: |
see farther, stay up longer, fuse more data, and shorten the gap between detection and act
|
The World View deal matters because it pushes Ondas higher in the sensor stack. |
And higher in the stack usually means better strategic relevance. |
The Data Section: What the Numbers Say |
Now let's get more precise. |
For 2025, Ondas' preliminary figures showed: |
revenue of $49.7 million to $50.7 million, adjusted EBITDA of roughly negative $31.5 million to negative $31.0 million, and expected net income of about $50.4 million to $50.9 million, largely driven by a non-cash gain tied to the change in fair value of warrant liabilities rather than core operati
|
That last part matters a lot. |
This is not yet a cleanly profitable operating story. |
Core operating performance is still negative on EBITDA. So investors need to avoid looking at headline net income and assuming the business has crossed into steady profitability. The more relevant current operating measure is that EBITDA remained negative in 2025 even as revenue sur |
Now compare that with the forward picture: |
market cap: about **$2.01 billio minimum 2026 revenue target: **$375 m backlog: **$68.3 m cash at year-end: $551 million, plus about $1 billion raised in
|
That combination tells you why bulls are excited. |
This is no longer a capital-starved micro-cap trying to survive quarter to quarter. It is a very well-funded company trying to convert war-driven and ISR-driven demand into a bigger platform. |
But it also tells you what bears will focus on. |
The company still has to prove that: |
acquisition-driven scale can actually integrate, orders can convert into recognized revenue, margins improve as the platform expands, and the new target is more than aspirational math.
|
That is the gap between story and stock. |
Is It Cheap? |
Here is the honest Cheap Investor answer: |
ONDS is not cheap on trailing fundamentals. |
A $2.01 billion market cap against roughly $50 million of 2025 revenue means the stock is trading at around 40x trailing sales, which is obviously not cheap in any classic |
But ONDS is not being valued on trailing sales anymore. |
It is being valued on whether the company can actually become a $375 million-plus defense-growth platform in 2026. |
On that forward number, the stock is closer to 5.4x forward sales, which is aggressive but no longer absurd for a high-growth defense/autonomy name with substantial capital and a widening |
So the answer depends on your timeframe. |
On trailing numbers: |
No, it is expensive. |
On forward numbers: |
It is no longer obviously overpriced if management can deliver even most of the new guide. |
On execution risk: |
The stock still carries plenty. |
That is why this is not a "cheap stock" in the classic balance-sheet bargain sense. |
It is a re-rating story. |
And re-rating stories can make a lot of money if the revenue jump is real. |
What the Market Is Really Saying |
Here is the deeper read. |
The market is saying defense tech investors are hungry for companies that are: |
not just component vendors, not just drone manufacturers, and not just software wrappers with no hardware moat.
|
Ondas is trending because it is starting to look like a company trying to own a full mission workflow. |
That matters more in 2026 than it did two years ago because the defense market increasingly rewards integrated capability, not disconnected gadgets. The company's own language around stratosphere-air-land architecture, Palantir-linked AI workflows, and persistent ISR lines up with where modern defens |
That is the unique angle here: |
The real ONDS thesis is not "drones are hot." |
It is: |
Ondas may be building one of the public market's cleaner small-cap proxies for layered ISR and autonomous response. |
That is a much stronger thesis than a typical small-cap momentum trade. |
Bull / Base / Bear |
Bull case |
Ondas converts the World View acquisition into a genuine multi-domain ISR platform, hits something close to the $375 million 2026 target, converts backlog cleanly, and shows improving EBITDA leverage as volume scales. In that world, Needham's $23 target and H.C. Wainwright's $25 target stop looking aggressive and start looking like early-stage p |
Base case |
Revenue grows dramatically, but not as cleanly or as quickly as the market now hopes. Integration takes time, margins stay messy, and the stock becomes more volatile as investors separate real orders from aspirational pipeline. In that world, ONDS can still work, but the path is choppier than the bulls want. |
Bear case |
The company misses the spirit of the new guide, acquisition integration proves harder than expected, and the market decides it got too excited about a platform story before the operating proof was there. That would be especially painful because the stock is no longer cheap on trailing metrics and is now carrying elevated expectations. The company itself warns that the World View acquisition may not close in a timely manner or at all, and that expected synergies may not mate |
Action Plan for Tomorrow |
If you already own ONDS from lower levels, this is the kind of move where discipline matters. |
Do not confuse a better story with a guaranteed straight line. |
If you do not own it yet, I would not chase it as though there is no integration risk. |
A smarter framework is: |
start with a smaller position, add only if management begins proving the $375 million path in reported quarterly numbers, and watch whether EBITDA losses narrow as the r
|
This is not a "back up the truck" setup. |
It is a "respect the momentum, but demand proof" setup. |
Cheap Investor Checklist |
Over the next quarter or two, these are the numbers and signals that matter most: |
Does the company formally hold or refine the **$375 million min Does Q1 actually land near the guided **$38 million to $ Does backlog grow from the reported **$68 Does World View close on time and Do adjusted EBITDA losses narrow from the roughly **negative $31 mi Do additional analyst targets move up from the current ** Does the company keep translating platform language into actual defense customer wins and recognized revenue? Supported by the company's customer a
|
Bottom Line |
Ondas is trending because the story just got much bigger. |
A minimum $375 million 2026 revenue target, a Needham target hike to $23, and the World View deal together tell investors this may be evolving from a small autonomous-systems name into a broader ISR and defense-int |
But ONDS is not a classic cheap stock. |
It is a forward-looking execution bet. |
If management delivers even close to the new revenue path, the stock can still work from here. If integration stumbles or the growth curve disappoints, the market can punish it quickly because expectations have moved up fast. |
That is the Cheap Investor verdict: |
The story is stronger. The capital base is stronger. The strategic position looks better.
Now the company has to prove the numbers are as real as the narrative. |
Disclaimer: This editorial is for informational purposes only and should not be considered investment advice. Always conduct independent research before making financial decisions. |
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