SpaceX Shares Near a Low as a $600 Billion Valuation Hit Compounds Starship Setbacks and Lockup Anxiety

SpaceX shares hit fresh lows after Starship abort erased $100B, bond issuance triggered $600B sell-off. Earnings and lock-up expiry loom on August 4.

SpaceX’s stock has been battered since its June IPO, and the pain deepened on Monday when the shares closed at €104.96, a 3.17% loss that left them just 0.08% above a fresh 52-week low. At $119.85, the stock now trades roughly 45% below the record high of $225.64 set on June 16 — a dizzying fall from the $135 IPO price that first valued the company at more than $2.6 trillion. The sell-off has been fueled by a cascade of operational and financial headwinds that show no sign of easing.

The most visible trigger was the aborted Starship test on July 16, when four of 33 Raptor engines failed to ignite, forcing a postponement of Flight 13. SpaceX has swapped the faulty engines and rescheduled the launch for July 23 at 18:45 ET from Starbase in Texas. The mission is meant to deploy 20 Starlink V3 satellites on a suborbital trajectory and test a booster water landing in the Gulf of Mexico. The abort alone erased roughly $100 billion in market value, according to Spaceflight Now. Just days later, on July 20, an unusual Falcon-9 failure at Vandenberg — where engines briefly ignited then shut down — delayed a Starlink mission to the following day. That rare glitch added pressure to the very business line that investors view as SpaceX’s operational bedrock.

Yet the stock’s biggest one-day hit came from an entirely different source: a bond issuance announcement. SpaceX disclosed plans to raise at least $20 billion in debt, and within three days the company’s market capitalization collapsed by roughly $600 billion. The move stunned shareholders and amplified existing short?seller activity. Short interest has climbed to 29–30% of the float, with around half of the freely traded shares lent out. While estimates of short?seller profits vary, the bearish bets have clearly paid off during the recent slide.

A far bigger test arrives on August 4, when SpaceX reports its first quarterly earnings as a public company after the US market close. The webcast at 4:30 p.m. Eastern will be scrutinized for Starlink’s margin trajectory — the unit now claims 10.3 million subscribers and revenue growth of 50% — as well as spending on Starship and the xAI venture, which burned $7.72 billion in the first quarter alone. For full-year 2025, SpaceX reported a $4.3 billion loss. Two trading days after the report, a lock?up on roughly 911.5 million insider shares (about 20% of insider holdings) expires, releasing a potential wave of stock worth roughly $109 billion at current prices. A further 1.37 billion shares are due to be unlocked by August 17. An additional 10% tranche will remain restricted unless the stock recovers above $175.50.

Analyst opinions are split starkly. Cathie Wood’s ARK funds added 170,634 shares on July 20 at an average of $120.14, bringing her total stake to over 4 million shares; she values SpaceX at $2.5–3.1 trillion. Morgan Stanley maintains a $300 price target, Deutsche Bank stands at $255, JPMorgan at $225 with an overweight rating, while Piper Sandler is neutral at $156. The consensus of 30 buy, 6 hold and 1 sell ratings yields a median target of $235.34. On the bear side, investor Whitney Tilson warns the stock trades at roughly 92 times sales, a valuation he considers unsustainable. Whispers of a multibillion?dollar Pentagon cloud?computing contract could provide a floor, but for now the narrative is dominated by a tight cluster of catalysts: a make?or?break Starship retry, the first earnings as a public company, and a lock?up that will test whether retail and institutional buyers can absorb an avalanche of insider supply.