SpaceX Stock Wobbles Near Lows as Earnings, Lock-Up and a $1.6 Billion Pentagon Deal Collide

SpaceX shares down 49% from peak as $1.6B Space Force win fails to offset losses, lock-up cliff, and heavy short interest ahead of Q2 earnings.

SpaceX shares are clinging to a fragile recovery, but the calendar is stacking up against them. The stock closed at €99.72 on Thursday, up 1.55% on the day, yet that modest gain does little to mask a brutal stretch: the equity has shed roughly 33% over the past month and sits nearly 49% below its June all-time high of €194.46. With the company’s first quarterly earnings since its IPO due August 4 and a lock-up expiration just two days later, investors are bracing for a pivotal — and potentially painful — week.

The timing is particularly acute because the lock-up expiry will release as many as 911.5 million insider shares into the market, representing roughly 20% of the outstanding float. That flood of supply arrives alongside a heavily shorted stock: according to S3 Partners, about 35% of the free float is now sold short, representing a $26 billion bearish bet that makes SpaceX one of the most-shorted names on Wall Street. The convergence of earnings, a lock-up cliff and elevated short interest has created a pressure cooker that even a string of positive operational headlines has failed to relieve.

A $1.6 Billion Space Force Win Can't Stop the Bleeding

On Wednesday, Reuters reported that SpaceX had secured a $1.6 billion contract from the U.S. Space Force for 18 Falcon 9 launches through 2027. The award builds on a $6.5 billion military satellite-services deal from May, pushing the company’s total Pentagon contracts this year to at least $7 billion. Yet the stock fell 3.32% that same day to $112.55, underscoring how deeply the bearish narrative has taken hold.

The disconnect between operational wins and share-price performance has been a recurring theme. Last Friday’s successful Starship Flight 13 — which deployed 20 next-generation Starlink V3 satellites and achieved what SpaceX called the softest ocean landing in the company’s history — was followed by a 4% drop in the next trading session. Investors appear far more focused on the company’s mounting losses and the looming dilution risk than on its engineering milestones.

Losses Mount as AI Spending Weighs

SpaceX reported a net loss of $4.9 billion for the full year 2025, and the first quarter of 2026 added another $4.28 billion — a pace that already approaches the prior year’s total. For the second quarter, analysts expect revenue of $6.82 billion and a loss of $0.29 per share. The company’s heavy investment in artificial intelligence is a key driver of the red ink: in the first quarter, roughly three-quarters of a $10 billion capital expenditure budget went to AI data centers. While Starlink generated operating profit last year, the broader enterprise remains deeply unprofitable.

That spending has stretched the valuation to extreme levels. SpaceX trades at a price-to-sales ratio of roughly 77, compared with an average of about 7 for comparable technology stocks. Analysts at Morgan Stanley have warned that a sustained move below $100 would imply that the market is systematically undervaluing SpaceX’s AI-related ventures, including stakes in Grok and Cursor. The gap between the current price and the revenue multiple suggests that a significant portion of the company’s market capitalization rests on future AI revenue that has yet to materialize.

Analysts Split on Direction as Technical Signals Flash Caution

The analyst community remains deeply divided. Bernstein-SocGen’s Douglas Harned reiterated an "Outperform" rating with a $239 price target, while Deutsche Bank’s Edison Yu maintained a Buy rating and a $255 target — implying potential upside of nearly 130% from current levels. Yu pointed to a window in late August or September for Starship Flight 14, which would mark another step in the transition from Falcon 9 to the next-generation rocket.

On the bearish side, the technical picture is deteriorating. The relative strength index (RSI) has fallen to 35, a level that typically signals oversold conditions but has yet to trigger a meaningful reversal. The stock now sits just 4.30% above its 52-week low, and the combination of a lock-up release and a disappointing earnings print could push it through that floor.

The Two-Day Gauntlet

The next week will test whether SpaceX’s growing government backlog and Starship progress can outweigh the gravitational pull of losses, short sellers and insider selling. The earnings report on August 4 will be the first since the company went public at $135 per share in June, a debut that briefly pushed the stock above $225. Six weeks later, it trades below $117, and the market capitalization has fallen to roughly €1.313 trillion.

With the lock-up expiry arriving just 48 hours after the earnings release, the window for a positive catalyst is narrow. If the numbers disappoint, the additional supply of shares could accelerate the decline. If they surprise to the upside, the stock may finally find a floor — but with 35% of the float short and billions in insider shares waiting to be sold, the path of least resistance still points lower.