SpaceX Shares Slip Below IPO Price as Starship Booster Failure Compounds Pre-Lock-Up Jitters
Published on 07/25/2026 at 14:02 | Redaktion boerse-global.de
SpaceX’s stock closed at €101.18 on Friday, shedding 2.6% and falling decisively below the $135 IPO price for the first time since the company went public in June. The decline came after the 13th test flight of the Starship system delivered a mixed bag of progress and failure, leaving investors to weigh a genuine satellite deployment milestone against a second consecutive booster landing mishap.
The mission, which lifted off from SpaceX’s Starbase facility in Texas at 5:51 p.m. local time after multiple delays, achieved a notable first: the upper stage successfully released 20 next-generation Starlink V3 demonstration satellites on a suborbital trajectory before executing a controlled splashdown in the Indian Ocean. The new satellite generation promises significantly improved transmission and reception capacity over its predecessor, though the suborbital test did nothing to expand the existing Starlink network’s capacity.
The Super Heavy booster told a different story. Only 10 of the 13 engines slated for the landing burn re-ignited, and by the time the first stage slammed into the Gulf of Mexico, just five were still firing. Observers described the touchdown as “hard” rather than controlled — the second consecutive failure of this kind for the booster recovery program.
The stock’s slide has been relentless. Over the past month, SpaceX shares have lost 25.71% of their value, leaving them just 3.73% above the 52-week low of €97.54 hit on Thursday. On the Nasdaq, the stock briefly dipped below $111 during Friday’s session, marking the first time it has traded clearly beneath the $135 IPO price. The 14-day relative strength index now sits at 33.9, creeping toward oversold territory and reflecting the persistent selling pressure that has defined July.
Should investors sell immediately? Or is it worth buying SpaceX?
Analyst reactions to the latest developments are anything but uniform. One US research house downgraded the stock from “Hold” to “Sell” on Friday. HSBC’s Nicolas Cote-Colisson maintains a “Hold” rating with a $115 price target. Morgan Stanley’s Adam Jonas, by contrast, sees the weakness as a buying opportunity and has set a $300 target, noting that more than half of that valuation derives from SpaceX’s artificial intelligence business. He warned that a drop to $100 would mathematically imply investors are assigning zero value to the AI segment. The broader consensus remains cautiously optimistic, with the average analyst price target hovering around $230.
The calendar now points to two critical dates in early August. On August 4, SpaceX will report its first quarterly results as a publicly traded company. In the preceding quarter, the company posted revenue of $4.69 billion against an operating loss of $1.94 billion. Just two days later, on August 6, the first lock-up restrictions on insider shares expire, releasing roughly 911.5 million shares into the market. Additional tranches of about 7% each are scheduled to become tradable at the end of August and the beginning of September.
Short sellers, who already hold positions equivalent to roughly one-third of the free float, have racked up substantial paper profits from the recent sell-off. The lock-up expiry could amplify the downward pressure if insiders choose to cash out.
The valuation debate is further complicated by SpaceX’s February merger with xAI and the planned $60 billion all-stock acquisition of the AI coding assistant Cursor later this year. Several market observers have flagged the Cursor deal as a potential source of additional dilution for existing shareholders.
SpaceX at a turning point? This analysis reveals what investors need to know now.
Despite the Starship program’s experimental setbacks, SpaceX’s operational business continues uninterrupted. A Falcon 9 launch from California’s Space Launch Complex 4E is scheduled for Saturday, carrying another batch of Starlink satellites. CEO Elon Musk, meanwhile, is pressing ahead with an ambitious timeline: after a full review of Flight 13’s data, Flight 14 will attempt a “tower catch” of the Starship upper stage, using the mechanical “chopstick” arms at the launch tower to snag the returning vehicle mid-air — a maneuver that has so far only been successfully executed with the Super Heavy booster, back in late 2024.
For now, the market’s focus is squarely on the first week of August, when the convergence of SpaceX’s inaugural earnings report and the lock-up expiration will test just how much faith shareholders have in the company’s AI-driven future.
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