SpaceX Stock Rebounds as Argus Upgrade Caps a Week of Whiplash Moves

SpaceX shares jump 15.66% after Argus upgrades to Buy, citing rapid AI investment payback. Q2 revenue up 92%, but monthly loss remains 11.24%.

The seesaw trading that has come to define SpaceX's post-IPO life swung violently back to the upside on Friday, with shares closing 15.66 percent higher at EUR 115.14. The catalyst: an Argus Research upgrade that flipped the stock's narrative just days after a post-earnings slump had spooked investors. The weekly tally now shows a gain of 22.53 percent, though the stock remains 11.24 percent in the red on a monthly basis — a reminder that this equity rewards patience and punishes timing in equal measure.

The Analyst Stampede Behind Friday's Rally

Argus analyst Steven Silver moved SpaceX from Hold to Buy on Friday, setting a price target of USD 160. His reasoning centered on the rapid payback period for the company's massive AI infrastructure outlays, citing CFO Bret Johnsen's disclosure that certain AI compute investments are recovering their costs in under a year. That single catalyst was enough to ignite a broad risk-on move in the name.

Silver was hardly alone in turning constructive. JPMorgan's Doug Anmuth had already lifted his target from USD 225 to USD 240 on August 5, pointing to the AI segment's surprising profitability on an adjusted EBITDA basis during the second quarter — ahead of his own expectations. Morgan Stanley, Bernstein, and Bank of America all reaffirmed bullish stances during the first week of August, with price targets ranging from USD 235 to USD 300. The analyst community, in short, has rarely been this unified in its optimism.

A Quarter That Delivered — and Then Some

The upgrades trace back to second-quarter results released on August 4, which showed revenue surging 92 percent year over year to USD 7.8 billion, comfortably beating the USD 6.9 billion consensus. The AI business specifically saw revenue explode 247 percent to USD 2.56 billion over the same period. The net loss narrowed from USD 1 billion to USD 541 million, or 9 cents per share — landing well inside an analyst range that stretched from a USD 1.26 loss to a 33-cent profit. Adjusted EBITDA nearly tripled to USD 3.5 billion.

The growth engine, however, is expensive. Capital expenditures ballooned sixfold to USD 18.37 billion, with USD 15.83 billion earmarked for AI infrastructure alone. Management's response to the spending question is a target of USD 100 billion in annualized recurring revenue by the end of 2026, backed by USD 6.7 billion in new cloud contracts set to begin ramping in October. New AI orders totaling USD 14.1 billion add further heft to the pipeline, including a partnership with Nvidia on the Starmind AI1 satellite computing payload, a Google deal worth roughly USD 920 million per month, and agreements with Anthropic and Reflection AI for dedicated compute capacity.

Starlink, meanwhile, doubled its subscriber base to 12 million over the past year. Yet the market's initial reaction to all this was oddly muted: shares slid more than 7 percent in after-hours trading on the earnings release before Friday's Argus-driven reversal.

Lock-Up Release Fails to Deliver the Feared Flood

The week carried an additional overhang that investors had been bracing for. On August 6, the first tranche of the nine-stage post-IPO lock-up expired, freeing 911.5 million shares held by employees and early investors. The free float jumped from 4.9 percent to 11.8 percent of outstanding shares — a release worth roughly USD 101 billion at current prices. Market observers had warned that selling pressure could persist into December as subsequent tranches unlock.

The feared deluge never materialized. The stock actually gained on August 7, trading on volume exceeding 255 million shares. The resilience suggests that institutional demand is absorbing the supply, at least for now.

Starship's Next Act and the Road Ahead

Operationally, SpaceX shows no signs of easing its cadence. The company completed its 90th Falcon 9 launch of the year on Wednesday, carrying three Direct-to-Cell satellites for AST SpaceMobile, with the first stage landing for the 30th time on the droneship "A Shortfall of Gravitas." A Falcon 9 upper stage also made an uncontrolled reentry, striking the Moon at roughly 5,400 miles per hour — an event astronomers had been tracking.

Elon Musk has set ambitious targets for Starship: Flight 14, tentatively scheduled for late August pending regulatory approval, aims to deploy third-generation Starlink satellites with ten times the bandwidth capacity of current models. The subsequent flight would attempt the first catch of the upper stage using the launch tower. Musk has also floated a launch frequency of at least one flight per day within roughly a year.

The company's AI ambitions extend beyond Earth. Together with Nvidia, SpaceX is developing space-based data centers powered exclusively by Nvidia chips, targeting more than two gigawatts of compute capacity by the end of 2026 and around ten gigawatts by the end of 2027.

For now, the market's verdict is clear: the combination of explosive AI revenue, a narrowing bottom line, and operational momentum has won over even the skeptics. The 30-day realized volatility of 84.59 percent, however, serves as a cautionary footnote — this stock remains a wild ride, and the next sharp turn could come from any direction.