Published July 5, 2026 | Third in a series. See also: “SpaceX Is Going Public This Week” (June 9) and “SPCX Begins Trading Today” (June 12)
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Three weeks ago, SpaceX became a publicly traded company. It was the largest IPO in stock market history, it broke trading volume records on its first day, and it made Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire. Since then, SPCX has been one of the most closely watched — and most volatile — stocks on the Nasdaq. Here is an honest post-mortem of what happened, what it means for investors still holding, and what the next major catalysts look like.
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The Numbers: What Actually Happened
Date Event Price Change vs. IPO
June 11 IPO priced $135.00 —
June 12 Day 1 open $150.00 +11%
June 12 Day 1 close $160.95 +19%
June 13 Day 2 close ~$193 +43%
June 16 All-time high (intraday) $225.64 +67%
June 16 All-time high (closing) $211.39 +57%
June 23 52-week low $147.11 +9%
July 4 Current price $162.00 +20%
Current market cap: $2.13 trillion
Shares outstanding: 13.16 billion
Average 10-day trading volume: 133.69 million shares
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Phase One: The Pop
SpaceX executives rang the Nasdaq opening bell on the morning of June 12 — and in a fitting flourish, the company launched a Falcon 9 rocket in Florida approximately one hour before markets opened. The stock opened just before noon at $150, then climbed steadily throughout the session to close at $160.95, a 19% gain on IPO price.
Volume on day one topped 500 million shares — approaching Facebook’s debut in 2012 when close to 580 million shares changed hands, still the record for a first-day listing. The following Monday, SPCX added another 20%, with 244 million shares trading hands.
The structural driver was clear: with an initial float of only about 4% of total shares, even modest institutional demand produced outsized price movement. Add MSCI index inclusion beginning June 13 — requiring passive funds to begin purchasing regardless of valuation — and the early days of trading were less about price discovery than they were about supply and demand mechanics.
By June 16, SPCX hit an intraday peak of $225.64. At that point, the stock was up 67% from its IPO price in four trading sessions, and SpaceX’s implied market cap briefly exceeded $2.9 trillion.
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Phase Two: The Correction
What followed was equally dramatic. Between June 16 and June 23 — seven calendar days — SPCX fell from $225.64 to $147.11. That’s a 35% drawdown from peak, wiping out hundreds of billions in market capitalization in a single week.
This is not unusual for high-profile IPOs with small floats. The pattern is well documented: euphoric early buying driven by scarcity and index mechanics, followed by profit-taking from short-term traders once those structural tailwinds have run their course. Investors who bought SPCX on the open market between June 13 and June 16 at prices above $190 are still sitting on meaningful losses.
The correction was also driven by something more substantive: analyst skepticism finally found a mainstream audience. CFRA initiated coverage with a “sell” rating and a 12-month price target of $115 — a nearly 29% implied decline from the IPO close. CFRA’s concern was blunt: capital expenditures in Q1 2026 totaled $10.1 billion, versus $4.1 billion in the same period the prior year, with the majority going toward artificial intelligence infrastructure. Morningstar went further, publishing a fair value estimate of $63 per share — a figure that implies the stock was valued at roughly 3.4 times intrinsic value at its IPO price.
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Phase Three: The Recovery
Since the June 23 low, SPCX has recovered steadily to its current level of $162 — roughly 20% above the IPO price and 10% above the day-one close. Options trading activity has been described by CNBC as leaning bullish, and analysts at Wedbush initiated coverage on June 30 with an “Outperform” rating, describing SpaceX as a potential “major hyperscaler” — placing it in the same category as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud.
The 12-month consensus price target across all analysts currently covering SPCX is $188.57, implying approximately 16% upside from current levels. The range, however, is extraordinary: the high estimate sits at $310 while the low sits at $62 — a gap of nearly $250 per share that reflects genuine, fundamental disagreement about whether Starlink’s profitability can offset xAI’s losses at scale.
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Key Financials: What the Market Is Pricing
For context, here is where SPCX’s fundamentals sit as of the most recent disclosed data:
Metric Value
Revenue (TTM) $19.3 billion
Gross margin (TTM) 48.83%
Net margin (TTM) -45.00%
EBITDA (TTM) $3.95 billion
EPS (TTM) -$0.72
P/E ratio (TTM) -226x (negative earnings)
Debt-to-equity 72.78%
At $162 per share and $2.13 trillion in market cap, SPCX is priced at approximately 110 times trailing revenue. That multiple demands that investors believe the company’s three segments — Starlink, Space, and AI — will collectively generate earnings that don’t yet exist at a scale that justifies a valuation larger than every company in the world except Apple and Microsoft.
The bull case is real: Starlink’s gross margins are strong at nearly 49%, and the subscriber growth trajectory remains intact. The bear case is equally real: xAI is burning cash at an accelerating rate, Starship development is over budget, and the first public earnings report hasn’t arrived yet.
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The Only Number That Matters Right Now:
August 6, 2026.
That is SpaceX’s scheduled first earnings release as a public company. It will be the first time investors see a full quarter of audited, public-market-standard financials from the combined SpaceX-xAI entity. Every analyst target, every valuation model, and every bull or bear thesis is currently built on S-1 disclosures and pre-IPO estimates. August 6 is when those estimates collide with reality.
The three metrics to watch:
Starlink subscriber growth. The Q1 S-1 disclosure showed 10.3 million subscribers. If Q2 shows continued acceleration, the Connectivity segment’s profitability narrative strengthens. If growth is decelerating, the entire long-term model is under pressure.
xAI operating losses. The AI segment lost $6.35 billion in 2025. If Q2 shows that number stabilizing or declining, the market will react positively. If capital expenditures accelerated further — following the $10.1 billion in Q1 — investors will need to see a credible path to monetization to justify continued patience.
Starship development costs. Any update to the $15+ billion cumulative Starship spend will be scrutinized heavily. This program is simultaneously the company’s biggest long-term asset and its most significant near-term cash drain.
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What Analysts Are Saying
The analyst community is more divided on SPCX than on almost any other large-cap stock currently trading:
Firm Rating 12-Month Target Thesis
Wedbush Outperform N/A disclosed “Major hyperscaler” potential; AI + Starlink convergence
NewStreet Research Buy $165 10-year lead in launch; justify valuation over 20–25 year horizon
CFRA Sell $115 Extreme capex growth; elevated valuation; execution risk
Morningstar Sell $63 Fair value analysis; decades for earnings to grow into multiples
Investing.com consensus Buy $188.57 8 buy / 1 sell; 16% upside from current levels
NewStreet Research’s framing is worth noting for long-term investors: “We think you have to be looking out over a kind of 20 to 25-year time frame. I think a lot of the building blocks are in place to succeed, but it is definitely a much longer-dated equity story than most.” That assessment — that SPCX is fundamentally a generational investment rather than a near-term trade — is probably the most honest framing of what this stock actually is.
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The Governance Issue: Musk’s 2.9 Billion Share Filing
One story that has not received the mainstream attention it deserves: Elon Musk recently filed disclosures covering approximately 2.9 billion SPCX shares — a filing that analysts and congressional observers have described as unusual. Combined with reports from Semafor that SpaceX and the government are in discussions about potential stock donations to “Trump Accounts,” the governance questions around SPCX are generating increasing scrutiny. These discussions do not affect the company’s operations or near-term financials, but they are a reminder that with 85% of voting power concentrated in a single individual, minority shareholders have limited recourse regardless of how the company performs.
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Who Should Own SPCX — and at What Price
Three weeks of public trading has produced a clearer picture of what SPCX actually is as an investable asset:
It is not a value stock. At 110x revenue with negative net income, this is not a position suited to investors focused on current earnings, dividends, or capital preservation.
It is not a short-term trade. The 35% correction from peak punished traders who bought the euphoria. The lockup expiry window — beginning in September 2026, when 90-day lockups for some participants expire — will bring additional supply pressure before the end of the year.
It may be a long-term conviction position for investors who believe in the 10-to-25 year Starlink, Starship, and AI infrastructure thesis and are comfortable holding through significant volatility, without needing the position to make sense on current fundamentals.
For investors in that category, the current price of $162 — 20% above IPO and 28% below the peak — is a more rational entry point than either the $135 IPO price (unavailable to most retail buyers at allocation) or the $225 peak. The August 6 earnings print is the next real signal.
For everyone else, patience is the position.
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This is the third article in an ongoing series covering the SpaceX IPO and the 2026 AI IPO pipeline. Previous articles covered the pre-IPO analysis (June 9) and the debut-day update including Anthropic and OpenAI pipeline coverage (June 12). Please see our Investment Disclaimer.