SpaceX's Lock-Up Wave Arrives With the Bull-Bear Chasm Wider Than Ever

SpaceX faces a pivotal 48 hours as 319M shares unlock, while 13F filings reveal massive institutional stakes and analysts diverge sharply on valuation.

The calendar has a way of forcing clarity on a stock, and for SpaceX the next 48 hours are exactly that kind of moment. Roughly 319 million shares come out of lock-up on Thursday, just as fresh regulatory filings reveal the sheer weight of institutional money now parked in the company. The juxtaposition has produced one of the more striking analyst disagreements in recent memory: a $210 price target on one side, a $75 target on the other.

The Frankfurt-listed shares have been on a tear ahead of the unlock. Monday's session saw the stock climb 5.5 percent to €127.62, extending a recovery that has now added 9.4 percent over seven days and 20 percent over the past month. That momentum has carried the equity well clear of the 52-week low of €91.04 touched on August 3, though it still sits roughly 34 to 35 percent below the June record of €194.46.

The 13F Tsunami

The catalyst for the rally is a wave of 13F filings, the mandatory disclosures that institutional investors must make to the SEC. The snapshot, dated June 30, paints a picture of concentrated ownership that is rare even by the standards of mega-cap technology.

Alphabet emerges as the dominant force, holding 551 million shares worth approximately $94 billion. That position traces back to a $900 million investment made in 2015 — a stake that has appreciated roughly a hundredfold. Nvidia's holding of 122.76 million shares, valued at around $21 billion, came via its investment in xAI, which SpaceX acquired in February.

Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund disclosed a stake of 154 million shares valued at $26.3 billion, while Harvard Management reported a $2.2 billion position that accounts for more than half of the university's entire US equity portfolio. The Norwegian sovereign wealth fund holds a stake worth around $1.2 billion, and Italy's Intesa Sanpaolo disclosed roughly $966 million. In total, more than 1,500 institutions have now reported positions, with 23 of them collectively holding over 80 percent of the outstanding shares.

The Alphabet position carries particular weight in the parent company's own financials. Of the $112.2 billion net profit Alphabet reported for the second quarter, roughly $98 billion came from other income — largely unrealized gains on the SpaceX stake. Strip that out and the Google parent would have earned only about $18 billion, representing a roughly 35 percent year-on-year decline in earnings per share.

The Unlock Cometh

Thursday's release of 319 million shares follows an earlier tranche of approximately 912 million that became tradable on August 6. The expansion of the free float is widely viewed as a stress test for the share price — one the stock has so far absorbed with surprising resilience.

The divergent analyst views suggest the market is struggling to reconcile two very different narratives about the company's trajectory.

UBS's John Hodulik reaffirmed his Buy rating on Monday with an unchanged price target of $210, pointing to the growth runway at Starlink. The firm expects US subscriber numbers to climb from roughly 3 million today to 6 million by the end of 2027 and 20 million by 2031, powered by the new V3 satellite generation.

On the other side stands Glenn Thum of Phillip Securities, who maintained his Sell rating with a price target of just $75 — implying downside of roughly 47 percent from current levels. Thum's concerns center on two issues: customer concentration and capital intensity. A single AI client accounted for 19.5 percent of quarterly revenue in Q2, up from under 10 percent a year earlier, and many cloud contracts are cancellable with just 90 days' notice. Meanwhile, capital expenditures of $18.4 billion represent 2.4 times revenue.

Growth That Costs Money

The operational picture that emerged from the second quarter is one of explosive growth alongside persistent losses. Revenue climbed 92 percent to $7.81 billion, beating consensus estimates. AI-related revenue surged 247 percent to $2.56 billion, and CEO Elon Musk has indicated that AI revenue could soon overtake Starlink. The satellite business, for its part, has doubled its subscriber base to roughly 12 million.

Yet the company still posted a net loss of $541 million (the secondary source puts the operating loss at $542 million), driven by heavy investment in computing capacity for the AI business. The $60 billion acquisition of AI coding firm Cursor, completed on August 14 and financed through new share issuance, adds another layer of growth ambition — and another layer of dilution.

Bernstein's Douglas Harned sees the Starship rocket's reusability as central to the long-term AI strategy, projecting revenue of $600 billion by 2031 supported by up to 3,500 Starship launches.

The gap between the most optimistic and most pessimistic views on this stock is extraordinary — a $135 spread between the two analyst targets. With annualized 30-day volatility running at 92 percent, the market is clearly pricing in the possibility of violent moves in either direction. Thursday's unlock will provide the next data point in that debate.