Three trading sessions in and the market still hasn’t made up its mind on SPCX. That’s actually the most honest thing you can say right now.
What happened: SpaceX priced its IPO at $135 per share on June 11 and opened trading on the Nasdaq on June 12 under the ticker SPCX — the largest initial public offering in recorded market history, raising $75 billion at a $1.75 trillion valuation. The stock opened at $150, jumped over 30% intraday, and closed at $160.95, up 19.2% on day one. It then continued climbing in after-hours to $166.76, briefly pushing the company’s market cap to roughly $2.2 trillion.
That’s the headline. Here’s the part people skip.
The financials tell a complicated story. SpaceX generated $18.7 billion in revenue for full-year 2025 — roughly 40% year-over-year growth — but posted a net loss of $4.9 billion. Starlink is the only profitable segment, generating $3.26 billion in revenue in Q1 2026 alone, or approximately 69% of the company’s total quarterly sales, with $1.19 billion in operating income. The rocket launch division and xAI infrastructure investments are burning cash. At the first-day close, the stock was trading at roughly 112x annualized sales — a multiple that has no real comparable in public markets.
Slight tangent, but it matters: Elon Musk is not selling a single share in this offering and retains 82.4% of voting control post-listing. That concentration of power means strategic decisions — Mars, Starship, xAI orbital data centers — remain entirely his call, regardless of what public shareholders think.
What the Bulls and Bears Are Actually Arguing
- Bull case: Starlink has over 9.2 million subscribers across 120 countries with a $15.5 billion annualized revenue run-rate and $4.4 billion in operating profit. The company’s stated total addressable market of $28.5 trillion — including $1.6 trillion for Starlink, $370 billion for space-enabled solutions, and $26.5 trillion in AI applications — is the kind of number that makes even aggressive valuation models look tame if execution lands.
- Base case: New Street Research projects 22% upside within 12 months, citing Starlink subscriber growth and an expanding launch manifest. Analysts set an average 12-month price target of $164, with a high estimate of $227.
- Bear case: Bears warn of a potential correction to $75 per share based on fundamentals alone. Starlink’s average revenue per user has declined roughly 18% since 2023 as aggressive pricing prioritizes share over margin. And the stock’s current price-to-sales ratio of ~100x dwarfs even the most aggressively valued tech names.
Technical Overlay
SPCX has no meaningful trading history yet — the 52-week range is effectively $135 (IPO price) to $176.52. The stock settled near $161 heading into the weekend. Watch for early consolidation between $150 and $170 as the initial pop digests. A clean hold above $165 keeps the momentum crowd engaged; a slip back toward $145–$148 opens the IPO gap.
What I’m watching this week: the offering officially closes today, June 15. Post-close institutional positioning and any early analyst initiations will set the tone for the next move. Wedbush’s Dan Ives framed the IPO as “an important moment for the broader tech sector” tied to the AI revolution — if that framing takes hold across the Street, initiations will skew bullish and provide a near-term floor.
The real question isn’t whether SpaceX is a great company. It almost certainly is. The question is whether this is the right entry price — and at $161, that debate is genuinely open.
For informational purposes only.
