SpaceX Enters Its Most Volatile Stretch Yet: Earnings, a Lock-Up Wave and a Congressional Probe All Land Within Days

SpaceX shares near 50% below high as earnings, lock-up expiry, and lawmaker probe add to short-seller pressure.

The timing could hardly be worse. Just as SpaceX prepares to deliver its first quarterly report as a public company, a cascade of pressures is converging on the stock — a looming expiry of insider share restrictions, a record short position, and now a senior US lawmaker demanding access to the company's Tennessee data centers.

Shares closed at €97.54, a decline of 29.51 percent over the past 30 days. The stock sits 49.84 percent below its 52-week high, having nearly halved in value within weeks. At the Nasdaq, the picture is starker still: from a June 16 record of $225.64, the price has fallen to roughly $112 — below the $135 IPO price — trimming market capitalization from around $3 trillion to approximately $1.48 trillion, according to Morgan Stanley.

A Two-Day Gauntlet

The immediate catalyst for further turbulence arrives next week. On Tuesday, August 4, SpaceX reports second-quarter earnings for the first time as a listed entity. Analysts expect revenue of approximately $6.75 billion, adjusted EBITDA of $2.0 billion, and a loss per share of $0.35. The Starlink division is projected to have 12 million subscribers generating an average revenue per user of $65.50.

Forty-eight hours later, on August 6, the first lock-up period for early investors expires. That unlocks roughly 911.5 million shares worth about $100 billion — the first of eight tranches that will release around four billion shares by January 2027. The collision of an earnings print with the start of a lock-up wave is widely seen as a recipe for outsized price swings.

Adding fuel: short sellers have amassed positions exceeding $26 billion, representing around 35 percent of the free float. Since the IPO, they have reportedly banked $7.3 billion in profits — making SpaceX the second-most profitable short of the year after Tesla. Musk has responded with his characteristic bravado, warning that the survival probability of the short sellers is very low.

Political Pressure on the AI Ambitions

The market turbulence is now compounded by a political front. Frank Pallone, the ranking Democrat on the House Energy Committee, has demanded that Musk provide documents and allow site visits to the company's data centers and power plants around Memphis, Tennessee. In a letter, Pallone accuses the SpaceXAI division of operating gas-fired turbines without emissions controls or permits, creating what he calls a "massive health risk" for the region.

The allegations are specific: at the Colossus-2 facility in neighboring Mississippi, at least 60 gas turbines are running without air permits. According to the letter, these installations make SpaceXAI the largest source of pollution in the Memphis area — five times more environmentally damaging than the city's airport, the second-largest emitter locally. Pallone has set an August 11 deadline for the requested information and wants to schedule visits to both the Colossus-1 and Colossus-2 sites.

The political headwinds extend beyond the letter itself. A Gallup poll from May found that seven in ten Americans oppose the construction of an AI data center in their neighborhood, with 48 percent strongly opposed. The Colossus facilities, originally built by xAI and equipped with Nvidia's latest processors, form the backbone of SpaceX's bid to compete with OpenAI and Anthropic — making any regulatory setback there a direct threat to a core growth story.

Wall Street Builds a Safety Net

The convergence of risks has prompted at least five financial institutions, including Morgan Stanley and Marex Group, to file for structured products tied to SpaceX shares. The design philosophy: cap upside in exchange for downside protection.

Marex is offering a nine-month note that auto-calls if the stock closes at or above its initial level on specified observation dates. Investors receive a minimum monthly coupon of 1.8 percent regardless of price action, and are protected against declines of up to 35 percent at maturity — beyond that, they bear full risk. Morgan Stanley, meanwhile, has structured a note paying a fixed 40 percent return if the share price trades sideways or higher through early 2028.

A Marex executive described the product launch as one of the fastest ever tied to a newly listed security. The demand reflects both the stock's popularity and its extraordinary volatility — since June, an entire investment ecosystem of options and leveraged ETFs has sprung up around Musk's rocket, satellite and AI conglomerate.

Divergent Views on Fair Value

The analyst community remains sharply split. Morgan Stanley, despite its "Max Q" warning — a reference to the point of maximum aerodynamic pressure during a rocket launch — maintains a buy rating with a $300 price target. Its sum-of-the-parts valuation attributes $128 to the Starlink connectivity business, $152 to Enterprise AI, $12 to X/Grok, and just $8 to the traditional space launch operations. The bank flags the next Starship test flight, expected in late August or early September, as a potential catalyst.

CFRA's Keith Snyder takes a far more cautious stance, rating the stock a Sell with a $115 target and citing heavy dependence on the Starship program. The consensus sits at "Moderate Buy" with an average target of $239.04 — more than double the current trading level. At the pessimistic extreme, investor George Noble argues the stock is worth just $30.

Fundamental Support

Amid the turbulence, the defense business provides a measure of ballast. The US Space Force has awarded SpaceX a $1.6 billion contract for 18 Falcon 9 launches to be completed by the end of 2027 — roughly $89 million per launch. The missions, operating under the NSSL Phase 3 Lane 1 program from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, will deploy satellites designed to detect and track aerial targets in support of the "Golden Dome" missile defense initiative, whose total cost is estimated at around $185 billion. Year-to-date Pentagon awards to SpaceX now total at least $7 billion. The launch segment alone generated over $4.1 billion in revenue in 2025, with EBITDA of $653 million.

There is also speculative chatter about a potential merger with Tesla. The Wall Street Journal has reported that Tesla is considering selling its China business to facilitate a combination; betting markets put the probability of such a merger before May 2027 at 74 percent. Musk has declined to rule it out, citing growing overlap in semiconductors and Starlink integration into Tesla vehicles — though nothing has been confirmed.

For now, the immediate question is whether the stock can navigate the next ten days. Between the earnings report, the lock-up expiry, and Pallone's August 11 deadline, investors will have little time to catch their breath.