SpaceX’s $1.6 Billion Pentagon Win Offers a Brief Breather as Earnings and a Lock-Up Storm Loom
Published on 07/30/2026 at 16:01 | Redaktion boerse-global.de
The defense business is proving to be a powerful counterweight for SpaceX, but it may not be enough to shield the stock from the twin pressures bearing down on it. On Wednesday, the US Space Force awarded the company two contracts worth a combined $1.6 billion for 18 Falcon-9 launches, a deal that briefly arrested a slide that had driven shares to fresh lows. The missions, set to blast off from Vandenberg Space Force Base by the end of 2027, will deploy satellites under the “Space-Based Sensing and Targeting” program, designed to detect and track airborne threats.
The award, issued under the NSSL Phase 3 Lane 1 framework, was finalized in just two months — an unusually brisk pace for defense procurement. The Space Force had recently raised the ceiling for Lane 1 from $5.6 billion to $17 billion, opening the door for more such contracts. The new deal adds to a bumper year for SpaceX’s government business: the company had already secured $4.16 billion in May for the SB-AMTI satellite system and $2.29 billion for a data network, bringing its 2025 Pentagon haul to at least $7 billion. A portion of that total is tied to the “Golden Dome” missile-defense program, whose overall price tag is estimated at roughly $185 billion.
The stock, which had tumbled to a record low before the Space Force news broke, rebounded on Thursday. In German trading, shares changed hands at €101.26, up 3.12% on the day, leaving them just 7.55% above the 52-week trough. The recovery, however, feels fragile. Rivals United Launch Alliance and Blue Origin are grappling with technical issues on their own rockets, which could favor SpaceX in future competitions, but the immediate headwinds are formidable.
Investors are counting down to two pivotal events in early August. On the 4th, SpaceX is scheduled to report its first quarterly results as a publicly traded company, followed two days later by the expiration of a lock-up agreement that will free up roughly 911 million shares held by early investors — about a fifth of the currently restricted float. The prospect of a flood of new supply has short sellers circling. According to S3 Partners, around 35% of the free float is now sold short, representing a $26 billion bet against the stock, making SpaceX one of the most heavily shorted names on Wall Street.
Should investors sell immediately? Or is it worth buying SpaceX?
The earnings report itself carries high stakes. Analysts expect second-quarter revenue of $6.82 billion and a loss of $0.29 per share. In the first quarter, SpaceX posted a net loss of $4.3 billion on sales of $4.7 billion. Heavy spending on artificial intelligence is weighing on profitability: the company said roughly three-quarters of its $10 billion in first-quarter capital expenditure went into AI data centers. While Starlink generated an operating profit last year, the broader AI push is compressing margins and fueling valuation concerns. SpaceX trades at a price-to-sales ratio of about 77, compared with an average of roughly 7 for comparable technology stocks — a gap that suggests much of the current market capitalization rests on future AI revenue from ventures like Grok and Cursor, whose profitability remains unproven.
The analyst community is split. Morgan Stanley’s Adam Jonas warned that a drop below $100 would signal that investors are systematically undervaluing SpaceX’s AI activities. Deutsche Bank’s Edison Yu, more bullish, reiterated a buy rating with a $255 price target, arguing that shifting resources from the Falcon-9 program to Starship is the right strategic move.
Even positive operational milestones have failed to lift the stock lately. After the successful launch of Starship Flight 13, which deployed 20 Starlink V3 satellites and executed a soft water landing, shares fell more than 4% in the following session. A separate mission early Thursday — NROL-95 for the National Reconnaissance Office, the third such flight under a 2024 NSSL Phase 2 contract — saw a Falcon 9 first stage complete its seventh flight and land at LZ-2, generating a sonic boom across parts of central Florida. The news barely registered with traders.
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Elon Musk has sought to steer attention toward the longer-term horizon. He recently said Starship’s heat-shield costs should fall well below $100 per kilogram of payload, and reiterated his view that a crewed Mars mission is possible in five to seven years. But for now, the market is focused on the next two weeks. The $1.6 billion Space Force contract provides a positive counterpoint to the uncertainty around valuation and the coming lock-up expiry, but it does little to change the immediate calculus. Whether the defense-driven relief rally has legs will likely become clear only after the August 4 earnings release and the lock-up expiration two days later.
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