SpaceX's First Earnings Test Arrives With a Record $24.6 Billion Short Bet Hanging Over the Stock

The timing could hardly be more uncomfortable. SpaceX reports its inaugural quarterly results as a public company on Tuesday after the bell, and the shares enter the event pinned near their lowest level since the June listing. The stock closed Friday at €93.96, down 3.48 percent on the day and roughly 32 percent lower over the past month — leaving it just 0.59 percent above the 52-week trough touched on July 31.

What makes the moment especially fraught is the sheer scale of bearish positioning stacked against the company. Short sellers have built what S3 Partners describes as one of the largest single-stock bets on Wall Street, with 219.3 million shares sold short by the end of July — roughly 34 percent of the free float. That figure has exploded from just 23.3 million shares in mid-June. The market value of those positions: $24.6 billion, a wager that now eclipses the short interest in Tesla, Elon Musk's other listed venture. Ortex data tells a similar story, pegging shorted shares at around 196 million, or about 31 percent of the float, versus 5 to 7 percent at the time of the IPO.

The bearish thesis is straightforward, and it centers on what happens Thursday. On August 6, the first lock-up expiration since the listing frees 911.5 million shares held by early investors, executives and insiders — a block worth roughly $116 billion. Currently only about 640 million shares trade freely, representing roughly 5 percent of all outstanding stock. Once the restriction lifts, that figure roughly doubles to about 12 percent, according to S3. The logic of the short trade, as S3 research director Sam Pierson puts it, is that few expect the earnings report to be strong enough to absorb that wave of newly tradable supply.

A shareholder Q&A that reveals a split audience

SpaceX has opened an online portal ahead of the call, allowing shareholders to submit and upvote questions — a format familiar to Tesla investors. Whether Musk himself participates has not been confirmed by the company. The submissions so far expose a notable divide between professional and retail investors. Questions about revenue and guidance attracted little traction, while requests for more footage of the Human Landing System — the lunar lander built for NASA's Artemis mission — dominated. Queries about "Asteroid," the recently unveiled Shiba Inu mascot complete with a $35 plush toy, also drew strong support.

A potential SpaceX-Tesla merger, by contrast, barely registered on the SpaceX forum, appearing once with a single vote. The same topic had gathered over 100 votes on Tesla's parallel earnings forum the previous week. Musk has publicly dismissed a Wall Street Journal report claiming Tesla managers were preparing for a corporate split ahead of such a combination.

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Analysts hold their ground despite the slide

Wall Street's professional class remains largely undeterred by the share price collapse. Since the IPO, the stock carries 23 buy ratings, six holds and one sell, with an average price target of $239.04, according to TipRanks. S&P Global's poll of 34 analysts produces a similar consensus — a buy recommendation and a mean target of $236.71 — though individual estimates range wildly from $62 to $800.

The professional debate around Tuesday's numbers will center on two areas: Starlink's user growth, after the service crossed 10 million active customers in early 2026, and the AI segment encompassing X, Grok, Cursor and the data-center capacity rental business. Analysts expect a meaningful revenue jump in the latter, as infrastructure payments from tenants like Anthropic and Alphabet expand.

Cathie Wood's Ark Invest has been buying since day one of the listing and continued adding through the recent trading sessions. The firm frames the volatility as a passing phase, pointing to the economics of reusable rockets and Starlink's growth runway as the longer-term story.

Oversold signals and a second catalyst

Technical indicators suggest the selling may be stretched. The 14-day RSI sits at 31.0, firmly in oversold territory, while the annualized 30-day volatility has climbed to 54.45 percent. The stock now trades 51.68 percent below its 52-week high of €194.46, reached on June 16 just days after the Nasdaq debut.

Pierson flags three factors beyond the immediate week that investors should track: the ladder of further lock-up expirations, a potential S&P 500 inclusion that he estimates is realistically at least a year away due to index waiting periods — though the market may already be pricing that in — and the possibility of a Tesla merger that could accelerate an index entry.

The earnings call itself will be streamed via audio webcast, with registration and replay available through the company's investor relations page. Management also faces a secondary consequence of the report: on the second full trading day after publication, investors gain permission to sell 20 percent of their locked-up shares. That release arrives into a market already on edge, with a record short position waiting to see whether the numbers justify covering — or confirm the bears' conviction.

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