SpaceX Faces a Pivotal Week as Record Short Bets Collide With Lock-Up Expiry and First Earnings

SpaceX shares near 52-week low with record short interest ahead of Q2 earnings and lock-up expiry, freeing $116B in shares.

The numbers tell a stark story. SpaceX shares closed Friday at €93.96, down 3.48 percent on the day and roughly 32 percent lower over the past month. The stock now sits barely above its 52-week low of €93.41, touched on July 31, and has fallen more than half from the record high of €194.46 set in June. The company's market capitalization currently stands at approximately €1,281.26 billion.

What makes the slide particularly notable is the sheer scale of bearish positioning behind it. Short sellers have amassed one of the largest bets against a single stock on Wall Street, with the position now exceeding even the bearish wagers placed against Elon Musk's other major holding, Tesla.

A Record Short Position Builds

According to S3 Partners, short interest in SpaceX reached 219.3 million shares by the end of July, representing roughly 34 percent of the freely tradable float. That marks a dramatic escalation from mid-June, when only 23.3 million shares were sold short. The market value of these positions stands at $24.6 billion. Data provider Ortex offers a similar picture, reporting around 196 million shares shorted — about 31 percent of the float — compared with just 5 to 7 percent at the time of the initial public offering.

Sam Pierson, research director at S3 Partners, frames the short thesis in straightforward terms: the bet is centered on the upcoming lock-up expiration. The expectation among bears is that the quarterly results will not be strong enough to absorb the wave of newly tradable shares.

Two Catalysts in One Week

The timing could hardly be more compressed. On Tuesday, August 4, SpaceX will report its first quarterly earnings as a publicly traded company, releasing results after the market close. Two trading days later, on August 6, the initial 180-day lock-up period expires, freeing roughly 911.5 million shares held by early investors, executives and insiders — a package valued at approximately $116 billion. Currently, only about 640 million shares are freely tradable, roughly 5 percent of all outstanding stock. After the lock-up release, that figure is expected to roughly double to around 12 percent, according to S3 Partners.

The earnings call itself promises to be an unusual affair. Reuters reported on Saturday that this will be the company's first such conference call since the June IPO. Analysts had hoped to focus on AI investments and the profitability of the Starlink business, but the shareholder question portal tells a different story. Users submitted queries about the Starship HLS lunar landing system for NASA's Artemis program, the idea of painting a rocket pink, and a Shiba Inu mascot named "Asteroid." The question about AI business profitability ranked only 183rd in popularity, while interest in a potential Tesla merger was virtually nonexistent. Roughly 30 percent of IPO shares were allocated to retail investors — an unusually high proportion for a major US listing — which likely explains the nature of the questions.

The Starlink Picture and the AI Drag

Behind the market drama, the underlying business presents a mixed picture. Starlink, the satellite internet division, reached 10.3 million subscribers in the first quarter of 2026, up 105 percent year over year, with 2025 annual revenue of $11.3 billion. However, average revenue per user has declined from $86 to $66 per month, even as terminal production costs have fallen 59 percent since 2022.

The AI segment — which encompasses X, Grok, Cursor and the data center capacity rental business — remains loss-making. SpaceX has plans for orbital data centers involving up to one million satellites, but the business depends heavily on short-term, cancellable contracts with clients such as Anthropic. In the most recent quarter, the company reported a loss of $4.3 billion on revenue of $4.7 billion, according to the Daily Mail. Alphabet and Anthropic are expanding their infrastructure rental payments, and analysts expect a significant revenue jump in this segment.

Analyst Divergence and Technical Signals

Wall Street's view of the stock is anything but unified. Since the IPO, 23 analysts have issued buy ratings, six hold ratings and one sell, with an average price target of $239.04, according to TipRanks. S&P Global's survey of 34 analysts produces a similar consensus of $236.71, though individual targets range from $62 to $800. Morgan Stanley's Adam Jonas sees a target of $300, while a Raymond James analyst has suggested the stock could octuple to $800.

Technical indicators suggest the selling may be approaching exhaustion. The 14-day RSI stands at 31.0, signaling oversold conditions that often precede short-term stabilization, though they offer no guarantee of a trend reversal. The annualized 30-day volatility of 54.45 percent underscores just how turbulent trading in the young stock remains.

Beyond This Week

Pierson identifies three factors that investors should watch beyond the immediate catalysts. The nearest is the lock-up ladder, with additional release dates to come. Further out lies potential inclusion in the S&P 500, which — due to waiting periods — would not be realistic before mid-2027 at the earliest, even though the market may already be pricing in that possibility. The third factor is a potential merger with Tesla, which could accelerate index inclusion.

The personal toll on Musk has been substantial. According to Benzinga, his net worth has fallen from a peak of $1.33 trillion to $684 billion amid the stock's decline. The company was valued at $400 billion a year ago in private markets, with that figure climbing to $1.5 trillion in its most recent private valuation.

For investors, the convergence of factors is striking: a stock near its annual low, a record short position, an impending lock-up release that could flood the market with supply, and a first earnings call where public attention appears focused more on rocket paint colors than on financial metrics. Whether Tuesday's results can steady the ship before Thursday's supply wave arrives will likely determine the stock's near-term direction.