We're adding SpaceX to our coverage now because it just became a genuinely trackable public company — and because the stock's first seven weeks of trading are already a case study worth following into its first earnings report. SpaceX priced the largest IPO in history on June 12, 2026, at $135 a share, valuing the company around $1.77 trillion. By late July, shares had fallen roughly 50% from their post-IPO peak — below the IPO price itself. First earnings land August 4.
The IPO, in Numbers
SpaceX sold 555,555,555 Class A shares at $135 each. After underwriters exercised their over-allotment option in full, gross proceeds rose to approximately $85.7 billion — the largest IPO ever, ahead of anything that preceded it. The stock opened at $150 on debut, closed its first session at $160.95, and later peaked near $225.64. By July 27, shares had fallen to $113.50, touching $108.66 intraday — down about 16% from the IPO price and nearly 50% from the June peak.
This isn't a routine post-IPO cooldown. A drop of that size, this fast, forces a real question: what do investors actually own at this price?
Two Businesses, One Ticker
SpaceX's IPO filings split the company into two segments with very different economics, and understanding that split is the whole key to the current valuation debate.
Connectivity (Starlink) is profitable. Starlink has 10.3 million customers across 164 countries — but average revenue per user has fallen from $99/month in 2023 to $66/month in Q1 2026. More customers at a lower price per customer can still be a good business, but it depends on the cost base holding up, which is a real thing to watch going forward rather than assume.
The AI segment (xAI, Grok, the X platform, and orbital/AI data-center ambitions) is deeply unprofitable. SpaceX's own IPO filings disclosed $818 million of AI-segment revenue in Q1 2026 against $3.29 billion of costs and expenses — an operating loss of roughly $2.47 billion, for that segment alone, in a single quarter. This is the part of the business investors are being asked to pay a premium for on faith, not on demonstrated returns.
The Valuation Debate, Distilled to One Analyst Call
Morgan Stanley's Adam Jonas has become the clearest voice framing this split for the market. He keeps a $300 price target on SpaceX, but values Starlink plus the core launch business at roughly $136 a share on their own — almost exactly the IPO price. At a trading price around $113–116, his math implies the market is currently assigning little to no value to the AI segment at all. That's a genuinely useful way to read the stock's drop: it isn't necessarily a verdict on Starlink or launch, which look fine; it's the market refusing to pay up for the AI story until it sees evidence the losses are shrinking.
The broader analyst community hasn't caught down to the market price yet — the average target sits around $236.71 with a Buy consensus (StockAnalysis.com / Investing.com) — a wide gap that either means analysts are behind the market's repricing, or the market has been too punitive too fast. That's an open question, not a resolved one.
Starship: The Physical Proof Point
The AI-and-orbital-infrastructure thesis depends heavily on Starship actually working at the cost and reliability SpaceX has promised, and the recent record is mixed. A Starship V3 launch attempt was scrubbed on July 16 after some Super Heavy booster engines failed to ignite. A subsequent flight days later had a split result: the upper stage successfully deployed 20 Starlink V3 satellites and splashed down intact in the Indian Ocean, but the booster failed its controlled soft splashdown off Texas. Starship is tied directly to NASA's Artemis lunar program, the larger Starlink V3 buildout, and SpaceX's pitch that orbital data centers can become a genuine AI infrastructure business — a booster-recovery failure doesn't kill that thesis, but it keeps the company short of the fast, cheap reusability the valuation assumes.
The Two Dates That Matter Most
August 4, 2026 — first earnings report. SpaceX's first quarterly report as a public company, covering Q2 2026, arrives after market close. This is the first real chance for the market to see actual segment-level results rather than IPO-filing snapshots, and it will be the first genuine test of whether the AI segment's losses are narrowing or widening.
August 6, 2026 — lock-up expiration. Up to 911.5 million additional shares could become tradable starting the day after earnings — a real supply overhang landing at almost the same moment as the first earnings verdict. That doesn't mean every early holder sells immediately, but it means the current float and the current price both come with an asterisk until this passes.
What to Watch
- Whether AI-segment losses narrow in the Q2 report, the single most important number for resolving the Jonas valuation framework one way or the other.
- Starlink ARPU trends — continuing to fall is fine if customer growth and cost discipline offset it; a widening gap would be a real concern.
- Starship's next flight and specifically booster recovery — the physical proof point underneath the entire orbital-AI-infrastructure pitch.
- How the stock trades through the August 6 lock-up relative to how it trades on the August 4 earnings alone — separating the two effects will matter for reading the reaction correctly.
- Whether Musk's dual role (also CEO of Tesla, with xAI now folded into SpaceX) raises any capital-allocation or attention-conflict questions as the company reports its first quarter under public-market scrutiny.
The Bottom Line
SpaceX is a genuinely unusual new public company: a profitable, massive-scale satellite internet business bolted onto a high-loss AI and orbital-infrastructure bet, all under one ticker that debuted at the largest valuation any IPO has ever commanded. The stock's roughly 50% decline from its post-IPO peak isn't obviously a verdict on the whole company — Morgan Stanley's own math suggests the core business alone is worth close to where the stock trades today, with the AI segment currently priced at close to nothing. Whether that's a screaming bargain or a fair reflection of unproven losses is exactly the question SpaceX's first earnings report, and the lock-up expiration two days later, will start to answer.
Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (NASDAQ: SPCX) IPO'd June 12, 2026 at $135/share (~$1.77T valuation). Shares have traded as high as $225.64 and as low as $108.66, recently around $113–116. First quarterly earnings as a public company are scheduled for August 4, 2026, with a share lock-up expiration following on August 6.