SpaceX's First Earnings Report: A Blowout Quarter Buried Under an $18.4 Billion AI Tab
Published on 08/05/2026 at 22:31 | Redaktion boerse-global.de
The numbers were spectacular. The market's reaction was anything but.
SpaceX's maiden quarterly report as a publicly traded company delivered revenue growth that most executives could only dream of, a narrower-than-expected loss, and a core business firing on all cylinders. Yet investors sent the stock tumbling on Wednesday, with the shares shedding as much as 12.68 percent to hit €95.00 in early trading before paring losses to settle around the €100 mark — a decline of roughly 8 percent on the session.
The sell-off leaves the equity hovering dangerously close to its 52-week low of €91.04, just 4.35 percent above that floor, and a world away from the €194.46 peak reached in June. For a company that staged the largest initial public offering in market history just months ago, the debut earnings experience has proven sobering.
The Quarter That Beat Expectations
On the surface, there was little to quibble with. Second-quarter revenue surged 92 percent year over year to $7.8 billion, comfortably clearing the analyst consensus of roughly $6.8 billion. The net loss narrowed to $541 million, or $0.09 per share — far better than the $0.24 to $0.26 per share deficit Wall Street had braced for. Adjusted EBITDA of $3.5 billion more than doubled expectations of $2 billion, while the operating loss shrank to $143 million from $970 million in the prior-year period.
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The problem, as investors quickly discerned, wasn't the income statement. It was the balance sheet — specifically, the capital expenditure line.
The $18.4 Billion Question
SpaceX plowed $18.4 billion into investments during the quarter, roughly six times the year-ago figure and well above the $13 billion to $14 billion analysts had modeled. Of that total, $15.8 billion — approximately 86 percent — went straight into artificial intelligence infrastructure. That sum represents more than double the company's quarterly revenue, a ratio that gave even the most growth-hungry investors pause.
Chief financial officer Bret Johnsen defended the spending spree, pointing to a payback period of under a year and noting an additional $6.7 billion in cloud contracts signed since the quarter closed. He also flagged that capital expenditures would remain at a similar elevated level for the next two quarters. The company's ambition: $100 billion in annualized revenue by year-end.
CEO Elon Musk, characteristically, aimed higher. He reiterated his vision of $1 trillion in annual revenue by 2030 — pulling the target forward by a year — and warned that memory chip prices would keep climbing as demand grows roughly 200 percent annually against supply expansion of only about 20 percent. SpaceX's AI push includes a partnership with Nvidia on the "Starmind AI-1" project.
Starlink Carries the Weight
While the AI division burns cash — posting a $1.26 billion operating loss despite revenue growth of roughly 250 percent to $2.56 billion — the satellite internet business remains the dependable earnings engine. Starlink revenue climbed 66 percent to $4.29 billion, generating $2.6 billion in adjusted EBITDA across twelve million subscribers. The classic spaceflight segment added $962 million in revenue, up 29 percent.
There is a wrinkle, however: average revenue per Starlink user fell 22 percent to $66, signaling that growth is increasingly coming from lower-priced customer segments. The unit economics are shifting even as the subscriber base expands.
The Looming Share Flood
Compounding the earnings anxiety is a calendar event arriving Thursday: the expiration of the first lock-up period for insider shares. Roughly 911.5 million shares — about 20 percent of the previously restricted float and worth over $100 billion — become tradable. That's a multiple of the current free-float of fewer than 280.1 million shares, raising the specter of a supply glut.
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Short sellers have taken notice. S3 Partners reports short interest of $23.6 billion, a substantial bet against the stock.
Analysts Split Down the Middle
Wall Street's response to the earnings report reflects the fundamental tension at the heart of the SpaceX story. Morgan Stanley sees fair value at just $300, while Raymond James is far more bullish at $800. Piper Sandler trimmed its target from $156 to $140, downgrading the stock to "Neutral" on the back of the lock-up expiry and projected capital expenditures of roughly $65 billion in 2027. Other houses sit in between, with targets ranging from $200 to $240.
The divergence underscores a simple reality: the market is currently pricing the risks of Musk's AI gamble more heavily than the compounding growth of Starlink and the broader revenue story. Whether that calculus shifts will depend on whether the AI investments start generating returns before the share overhang and the spending burden take a further toll.
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