SpaceX (SPCX) stock slid 0.5% to $114.60 on Monday morning, even after the company completed a near-flawless 13th Starship test flight on Friday evening. The broader market was up — S&P 500 futures rose 0.9% and Dow futures climbed 1.1% — making the move stand out.
Space Exploration Technologies Corp., SPCX
The stock has now fallen for three straight weeks, losing roughly 38% over that stretch. It sits below its $135 IPO price from June and more than 40% below its record closing high of $201.80.
Friday’s Starship flight hit most of its targets. The upper stage deployed 20 Starlink V3 satellites, relit an engine in the vacuum of space, and splashed down in the Indian Ocean. The booster did not achieve a soft splashdown, but KeyBanc analyst Michael Leshock still called it “near perfection” and a “meaningful success.”
Flight 14 is expected in a few weeks. CEO Elon Musk said SpaceX plans to attempt catching the upper stage with the mechanical “chopsticks” on the launch tower — something it has only done with the booster before.
On July 25, HSBC became the first major bank to initiate coverage of SPCX, tagging it with a Hold and a $115 price target — below the then-current price of $118.24. To arrive there, HSBC valued each SpaceX business separately and applied a 2x “innovation premium” to account for Musk’s track record. Even with that generous treatment, the bank landed below the market price.
HSBC’s base case projects revenue more than doubling to $38.2 billion in 2026, up from $18.7 billion in 2025. But it expects GAAP losses to continue through 2027 and free cash flow to stay negative until around 2030, requiring roughly $106 billion in cumulative cash burn to get there.
The bank’s bull-case scenario puts SPCX at $293 per share — but that requires Starship to commercialize, Starlink adoption to accelerate, and AI revenue to arrive faster than expected.
SpaceX’s Q1 2026 results showed revenue of $4.69 billion and an operating loss of $1.94 billion. Starlink carried the load with $3.26 billion in revenue and $1.19 billion in operating income. The AI segment brought in $818 million in revenue but posted a $2.47 billion operating loss.
Capital spending hit $10.1 billion in Q1, with $7.7 billion going to AI — the segment HSBC views as the hardest to win, given competition from Amazon, Microsoft, and Google.
Starlink subscriber growth has been strong, reaching 10.3 million by end of Q1, up from 5 million a year earlier. But average revenue per user dropped to $66 per month from $86 as SpaceX expanded into lower-priced markets.
SpaceX reports its first earnings as a public company after the close on Aug. 4. Two days later, on Aug. 6, the first lock-up expiry opens up to 911.5 million shares for sale — potentially lifting the public float from ~4.9% to ~12%.
Short sellers have already collected roughly $15.5 billion in paper gains since the IPO, with short interest near 31% of the tradable float.
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