1A report arriving into a losing streak
SPCX reports its first quarterly earnings as a public company today, August 4 — less than two months after listing in the largest IPO in history on June 12. The stock has not been kind to anyone who bought at the open: it’s down more than half from its post-IPO high, closing Friday at $108.37. Analysts, though, haven’t backed off. Deutsche Bank maintained a Buy rating and a $255 price target heading into the report — implying they think the stock could still more than double from here — with attention specifically on Starship’s progress after its 13th test flight and the timing of the next launches.
2The lockup cliff two days later
The more structurally important date might not even be today. On August 6, a large tranche of shares held by early investors and employees — insiders who’ve held stock privately for years and are now sitting on paper gains worth hundreds of billions of dollars collectively — becomes eligible to trade for the first time. Historically, lockup expirations create genuine selling pressure: professional investors who’ve been unable to realize gains for years tend to sell at least some portion once they finally can, simply to return capital to their own funds’ partners. That’s a mechanical, not sentiment-driven, source of potential downward pressure completely separate from whatever today’s earnings say.
3Bulls and bears are reading the same numbers differently
The bull case: SpaceX’s overall revenue growth is projected at roughly 100% for both 2026 and 2027, which would take 2027 revenue to around $80 billion from $18.7 billion in 2025 — genuinely rare growth at this scale, across a business spanning launch (Falcon/Starship), Starlink connectivity, and the newly folded-in xAI segment. The bear case: a stock already down over 50% from its high, facing a lockup unlock two days after earnings, in a sector (space/AI infrastructure) that’s seen sharp multi-week selloffs elsewhere this summer. Both stories are built from the same growth numbers — the disagreement is entirely about what multiple those numbers deserve after the post-IPO reset.
4What to watch
- Whether today's actual results beat or miss the $6.9 billion revenue estimate, and what management says about Starship's flight cadence for the rest of 2026.
- Trading volume and price action specifically on and around August 6, as the lockup expiry is a mechanical supply event separate from the fundamentals in today's report.
- Whether Deutsche Bank's $255 target — implying the stock could more than double — gets echoed or walked back by other analysts once the quarter's actual numbers are in.
Related reading
5FAQ
Why has SpaceX stock fallen so much since its IPO?
The stock priced at levels that implied extremely high growth expectations, and has since given back a large portion of its early gains as investors reassessed valuation — a common pattern for high-profile IPOs that debut at elevated multiples. It's still outperforming some other recent large IPOs on a relative basis despite the decline.
What is an IPO lockup, and why does it matter?
A lockup period restricts company insiders and early investors from selling their shares for a set time after an IPO, typically to prevent a flood of selling right after listing. When that period ends, some of those holders often sell to realize long-held gains, which can create downward price pressure independent of the company's actual performance.
What are SpaceX's three business segments?
SpaceX organizes its business into Space (Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, and Starship launch operations), Connectivity (the Starlink satellite broadband network), and AI (xAI, maker of the Grok models, which SpaceX acquired in an all-stock merger in February 2026).