SpaceX's Lock-Up Expiry Lands on a Share Price Already Nursing Wounds From Its AI Spending Reveal
Published on 08/06/2026 at 13:32 | Redaktion boerse-global.de
The timing could hardly be more awkward. Just 24 hours after SpaceX's first earnings report as a public company triggered a sharp sell-off, roughly 911.5 million shares — more than 20% of insider-held stock — become eligible for trading on Thursday. The float, which currently sits at just 4.9% of total shares, is set to more than double to 11.8% in a single stroke.
The stock, trading at €95.21 on Xetra, was up 1.87% in early dealings, a modest bounce from Tuesday's bruising session. The shares closed Wednesday at €93.46, down 14.12%, leaving them just 2.66% above the 52-week low of €91.04 touched on Monday. From June's record high, the equity has shed more than half its value, and the monthly decline stands at roughly 27–28%.
A Quarter That Beat Expectations — But Came With a Hefty Price Tag
The fundamentals underneath the noise were, by most measures, strong. Revenue for the second quarter came in at $7.81 billion, up 92% year over year and comfortably ahead of consensus estimates. The net loss narrowed to $541 million from around $1 billion in the prior-year period, while EBITDA climbed 191% to $3.5 billion.
The growth engine was unmistakably artificial intelligence. Segment revenue from AI jumped 247% to $2.6 billion, surpassing the legacy space business, which generated $962 million. Starlink remained the group's only profitable division, posting $4.2 billion in revenue — or $4.29 billion, depending on the rounding — with operating income of $1.66 billion and subscriber numbers doubling to 12 million.
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The problem was on the other side of the ledger. Capital expenditures surged to $18.4 billion in the quarter, roughly six times the year-ago figure, with about $15.8 billion funneled into AI infrastructure. Management signaled that similarly elevated spending is on the cards for the next two quarters, and CFO Bret Johnsen sought to reassure investors that the outlays would pay for themselves in under a year.
CEO Elon Musk, on the company's first post-IPO earnings call, reiterated his ambition to hit $1 trillion in annual revenue by the end of 2030 — pulling the target forward by a year from his earlier 2031 guidance. The company also aims to reach a $100 billion annualized revenue run rate by year-end. On the infrastructure front, Musk confirmed an exclusive reliance on Nvidia's Vera Rubin chips for data-center expansion, targeting 20 gigawatts of compute capacity by the end of 2027.
The Lock-Up Mechanics: A Partial Release, With More Waves to Come
Not all restricted shares are hitting the market at once. While 911.5 million shares become tradable today, a further 455.8 million remain locked because a price-contingent release condition — a threshold of $175.50 — was never triggered. Musk's own 42% stake, equivalent to roughly 6.4 billion shares, stays blocked until June 2027. Beyond that, around 12.9 billion additional shares are scheduled to be freed by mid-2027, making Thursday's event just the opening wave of a much larger supply overhang.
The next significant tranche, approximately 1.3 billion shares, won't be released until after third-quarter results in November. For the roughly 4,400 employees holding stock through the program, however, today marks the first opportunity to monetize a portion of their holdings — for one veteran who joined in 2009, that means a package worth several million dollars.
Wall Street Splits on What the AI Bet Is Worth
Analyst reactions to the earnings and the lock-up have diverged sharply. Bernstein raised its price target to $248 from $239, maintaining an Outperform rating and pointing to the AI revenue surge as validation of the business model. JPMorgan also turned more constructive, lifting its target to $240. At the optimistic end, Raymond James sits at $800 — a figure that underscores just how wide the valuation debate has become.
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On the cautious side, Morningstar pegs fair value at just $62, implying substantial downside from current levels. Stifel's $190 target and Piper Sandler's cut to $140 — accompanied by a downgrade to Neutral — reflect concerns about the doubling of the float, a $17 billion increase in 2027 capex estimates, and the cancellability of certain AI contracts. Wells Fargo's Ken Gawrelski trimmed his target to $215 from $230 but kept a Buy rating, citing revised 2027 capex projections of $296 billion, of which $263 billion is earmarked for AI.
The technical picture offers some support: the relative strength index at 38.4 suggests oversold conditions, which may explain Thursday's tentative rebound. Whether the unlock triggers sustained selling pressure or the stock resumes its bottoming process will likely become clearer in the coming sessions, as freshly tradable packages actually meet the market. Early investors including Founders Fund, Craft Ventures, Valor Equity and Alphabet now face the question of whether to bank gains or hold their nerve.
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