SpaceX Stock at a Crossroads as Starship Woes Compound Lockup Jitters and Extreme Analyst Divergence

SpaceX shares fell 5.4% to €108.40, erasing $100B in value since IPO, as a botched launch, polarised analyst targets ($75-$800), and a looming 911M-share lock-up expiry test investor conviction.

SpaceX shares closed at €108.40 on Friday, shedding 5.39% in a single session and leaving the stock just 0.99% above its 52-week trough of €107.34 set earlier in July. The slide has erased roughly $100 billion in market capitalisation since the company's June initial public offering, as a string of headwinds — a botched rocket launch, a looming wave of insider shares, and analyst targets ranging from $75 to $800 — conspire to test investor conviction.

The immediate trigger was the last-second abort of the 13th Starship test flight on July 16. Four of the 33 Raptor engines failed to ignite, prompting SpaceX to swap out two powerplants and modify the propulsion system. A new launch attempt has been pencilled in for July 23 or 24, depending on whether one follows the company's official schedule or Elon Musk's tweet — a discrepancy flagged by Reuters. The mission is suborbital and will carry 20 Starlink V3 satellites, which are to test deployment mechanisms and laser links before burning up on re-entry. Success is critical: Wolfe Research analysts have warned that a clean flight is needed to rebuild confidence ahead of SpaceX's first quarterly results as a public company, due in early August.

The analyst community has rarely been so polarised on a single name. Raymond James led the bulls with a "Strong Buy" and a $800 price target — a valuation that would imply a market cap north of $10 trillion. At the other extreme, Morgan Stanley's bear case of $75 envisions the stock falling by nearly a third from current levels. The consensus sits at $236, a figure that blends upbeat calls from Needham ($225), Evercore ISI ($230), and Canaccord Genuity ($246) with more cautious stances such as Piper Sandler's "Neutral" and $156 target. Adam Jonas of Morgan Stanley, whose base case is $300, justifies the range by projecting a revenue explosion from $18.7 billion in 2025 to $319 billion in 2030 and $3.3 trillion by 2040, driven largely by AI. Gary Black of Future Fund counters that the stock trades at roughly 40 times sales — historically unprecedented for a company of this size, and far above Nvidia's 10–25 multiple. He would only buy below $100.

That valuation debate is about to collide with a massive supply event. After SpaceX publishes its maiden quarterly report, as many as 911.5 million shares — worth some $115 billion — will become tradeable under the expiry of the IPO lock-up. Additional tranches of roughly 7% of total shares will unlock on days 70, 90, 105, 120, and 135 after listing, meaning around 40% of all equity could be free to trade by early December. One further condition: a further 455.8 million shares become eligible the moment the stock recovers above $175.50 — a mark it currently trades far below. Musk's own holdings remain locked until June 2027.

Short sellers have been feasting on the weakness. Roughly 30% of the 640 million freely tradable shares are believed to be sold short, generating paper profits of about $4 billion since the stock dipped below the $135 IPO price. Musk publicly taunted the shorts, describing their survival probability as "very low", but the technical and fundamental pressures are real. Cathie Wood sees opportunity: her firm bought $51 million worth of shares during the pullback.

Operationally, SpaceX presents a split picture. Starlink, the satellite-internet unit, generated $11.4 billion in revenue and $4.4 billion in operating profit in 2025, while the faster-growing AI segment bled $6.4 billion. Overall, the company posted a net loss of more than $4 billion on $4.6 billion of revenue in the first quarter of 2026. On the launch side, the Falcon 9 racked up 165 successful missions last year — a reminder that the core rocket business remains robust even as Starship struggles. The geopolitical dimension adds another layer: Iran has designated Starlink infrastructure and a ground station in the Middle East as military targets, even as SpaceX's Starshield division services multibillion-dollar Pentagon contracts such as the Golden Dome programme.

With the rocket's next flight, the lock-up cascade, and the first earnings release all converging in the coming weeks, SpaceX stock stands at a juncture where a single successful launch could reignite momentum — but the path is littered with risks that have pushed the equity to the edge of its all-time low.