SpaceX Shares Find Their Footing as Lock-Up Release Fails to Trigger Feared Sell-Off
Published on 08/07/2026 at 13:02 | Redaktion boerse-global.de
The first wave of insider share releases hit SpaceX's stock this week with all the drama investors had braced for — and then some. Instead of buckling under the weight of newly tradable shares, the equity posted a 6.55 percent gain on Thursday to 99.55 euros, a resilience that caught many market participants off guard. The advance extended into Friday, with shares adding another 2.04 percent to close the week at 101.58 euros, bringing the weekly gain to 8.10 percent.
The rebound masks a brutal stretch for the stock. Over the past month, SpaceX has shed 21.69 percent of its value, leaving the shares roughly half their 52-week high of 194.46 euros reached on June 16. The whipsawing has been driven by two converging forces: a blockbuster earnings report that nonetheless revealed eye-watering capital expenditure plans, and the beginning of a nine-stage lock-up expiration that will steadily increase the float through December.
Revenue Soars, But the Bill Comes Due
The turbulence traces back to Tuesday's second-quarter results, which blew past consensus on nearly every operational metric. Revenue surged 92 percent to 7.8 billion dollars, comfortably ahead of the 6.9 billion dollars analysts had penciled in. The connectivity segment anchored by Starlink delivered 4.3 billion dollars in revenue and 1.66 billion dollars in operating profit — the only profitable division in the house. Subscriber numbers doubled year over year to 12 million, with 1.7 million net additions in the quarter alone, the strongest growth spurt yet. Average revenue per user slipped from 85 to 66 dollars monthly, a function of the push into affordable global broadband.
The AI business, which bundles cloud services, Grok, and X subscriptions, proved the surprise package, expanding 247 percent to 2.56 billion dollars. Chief Financial Officer Bret Johnsen said the segment had reached a positive adjusted EBITDA margin ahead of schedule, with payback periods of under a year on individual AI data center investments. New AI contracts totaling 14.1 billion dollars were booked during the quarter. The net loss narrowed to 541 million dollars from roughly one billion dollars a year earlier, while adjusted EBITDA climbed 191 percent to 3.538 billion dollars.
Should investors sell immediately? Or is it worth buying SpaceX?
The catch came in the capital expenditure line. SpaceX plowed 18.4 billion dollars into investments during the quarter — 15.828 billion of it into AI infrastructure — against analyst expectations of around 13 billion dollars. Management signaled that the second half of the year would run at a similar clip, implying roughly 65 billion dollars in full-year capex versus a market consensus of 50 billion dollars. The stock initially cratered more than 7 percent in after-hours trading as investors weighed the cost explosion against the growth story, despite the company sitting on a 100 billion dollar cash cushion.
The Lock-Up Wave Arrives
Thursday brought the second shoe: the first tranche of the post-IPO lock-up expiration. Some 911.5 million shares became tradable — about 43 percent more than the shares originally issued at the IPO — lifting the free float from 4.9 percent to 11.8 percent of outstanding shares. At current prices, that newly tradable block carries a market value of roughly 101 billion dollars. Up to 20 percent of insider holdings were released in this initial wave, with additional tranches rolling out through December 8.
The market's reaction was telling. Rather than capitulating to fears of an overhang, buyers stepped in, with institutional investors like Fisher Asset Management adding to positions following the earnings release. Technical indicators support the picture of a settling market: the RSI sits at 41.9, firmly in neutral territory, though 30-day volatility near 79 percent suggests the ride is far from smooth.
Wall Street Splits on Valuation
The analyst community has responded to the earnings and the share release with markedly divergent views. JPMorgan's Doug Anmuth raised his price target from 225 to 240 dollars on Wednesday, reaffirming a buy rating — the growth rates at Starlink and in AI evidently outweighing the capital intensity concerns. Bank of America's Ronald Epstein likewise reiterated his buy recommendation with a 235 dollar target the same day, describing himself as "more positive" on the company's positioning in its core markets despite the heavy spending.
Piper Sandler struck the opposite pose, cutting its target from 156 to 140 dollars on Wednesday. The reduction was explicitly attributed not to fundamental deterioration but to the impending increase in tradable shares and the elevated investment levels. The wide dispersion of targets in between underscores the genuine uncertainty about how to value a company growing this fast while burning through cash at this pace.
SpaceX at a turning point? This analysis reveals what investors need to know now.
Starship's Next Act
Operationally, attention now turns to late August, when the 14th Starship test flight is slated to attempt the vehicle's first orbital mission. The plan calls for deploying initial Starlink V3 satellites into operational orbit, and — pending regulatory approval — SpaceX will try to catch the Starship upper stage directly at the launch site rather than letting it splash down in the Indian Ocean as previous flights have done. CEO Elon Musk used the earnings call to reiterate the goal of reaching a 100 billion dollar annualized revenue run rate by December, and pulled forward the long-term target of one trillion dollars in annual revenue from 2031 to 2030.
The company also unveiled a collaboration with Nvidia on satellite-based computing power, with a payload dubbed Starmind AI1 set to carry Nvidia's Rubin and Vera generation chips into orbit. For a stock that has been batted around by competing narratives of hypergrowth and capital hunger, the coming weeks offer no shortage of potential catalysts — for better or worse.
Ad
SpaceX Stock: New Analysis - 7 August
Fresh SpaceX information released. What's the impact for investors? Our latest independent report examines recent figures and market trends.
