SpaceX Braces for a Pivotal Crossroads as Lockup, Earnings, and a Rescheduled Starship Test Converge
Published on 07/21/2026 at 16:03 | Redaktion boerse-global.de
The coming days shape up as the most consequential stretch since SpaceX went public in June. On 4 August, the company will publish its first quarterly report as a listed entity after the close of US trading, followed just two sessions later by the expiration of a lock-up period that could unleash up to 911.5 million insider shares onto the market. Sandwiched between these events is a critical do?over for the Starship rocket after an aborted test earlier this month. The convergence has already driven the stock within 2% of its 52?week low.
The lock?up overhang is staggering in scale. The shares becoming freely tradeable from 6 August had a combined value of roughly $109.2 billion based on the stock’s closing price of $119.85 on 20 July. That tranche amounts to about 143% of the original IPO float. A further 1.37 billion insider shares are scheduled for release by 17 August, meaning the selling pressure could intensify through the rest of the month. The overhang was compounded earlier by news of a bond issuance of at least $20 billion, which erased approximately $600 billion in market capitalisation in three days.
Earnings will offer the first real glimpse into SpaceX’s books as a publicly traded company. Analysts expect second?quarter revenue between $5.3 billion and $8.1 billion, with a per?share loss ranging from $0.12 to $0.42. Investor focus is likely to settle on three areas: Starlink’s margins – the unit generated $11.4 billion in revenue during 2025 and now counts roughly 12 million subscribers – the ongoing cash drain from Starship, which has absorbed more than $15 billion to date (including $3 billion in 2025 and $900 million in the first quarter of 2026 alone), and the spending on the xAI initiative, which ate $7.72 billion in the same quarter. SpaceX reported a net loss of $4.3 billion for the full year 2025.
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Technical problems have added to the sense of vulnerability. The countdown for Starship’s Flight 13 was halted on 16 July after the Raptor engines failed to ignite. SpaceX swapped the faulty units and has now scheduled a new attempt for 23 July at 18:45 Eastern time from Starbase, Texas. This will be the second test of the V3 variant and is planned to deploy 20 Starlink?V3 satellites on a suborbital trajectory before both stages make controlled water landings. Separately, a Falcon?9 launch from Vandenberg was aborted on 20 July, the second consecutive scrubbed mission. The market’s reaction to the original Starship failure alone was estimated to have wiped out $100 billion in market value.
The share price has reflected the growing unease. SpaceX priced its IPO at $135, opened at $150, and rocketed to an all?time high of $225.64 on 16 June, briefly valuing the company at more than $2.6 trillion. Since then the stock has tumbled 45% to a close of $119.85 on 20 July after seven consecutive losing sessions. The 52?week low of $104.88 sits just $15 below that level, and the 30?day decline stands at roughly 21%. On a technical basis, the relative strength index of 35.3 points to an oversold condition.
Views on valuation could hardly be more polarised. Short interest is estimated at between 17% and 30% of the free float, with bearish traders having amassed paper profits of $4 billion to $5 billion during the recent slide. Elon Musk has publicly warned short sellers, but the selling has not abated. On the opposite side of the trade, Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest spent roughly $20.5 million on 170,634 shares at an average price of $120.14 on 20 July, lifting its total holding to more than 4 million units. Wood has valued SpaceX at $2.5 trillion to $3.1 trillion, a far cry from the $63 per share fair value assigned by Morningstar. The wider analyst consensus on TipRanks stands at 30 buy, six hold and one sell, with a median price target of $235.34. Morgan Stanley’s bull case of $300 is the highest on record, while Deutsche Bank maintains a $255 target.
The next week will test whether the company can convince investors that its heavy spending on Starship and xAI will eventually pay off, and whether the flood of insider shares can be absorbed without further damage. The earnings call on 4 August, followed by the lock?up release two days later and a rocket launch in between, means there is little room for missteps.
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