SpaceX (NASDAQ:SPCX) closed at $160.95 on June 12, its first day as a public company, capping the largest initial public offering (IPO) in history. On Friday, three months later, the stock closed at $152.71 — about 5% below where it started.
Flat doesn’t mean calm, though. Shares closed as high as $211.39 in their third session, took a beating into early August (bottoming near $108), and have spent most of September climbing back.
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The business, meanwhile, has been anything but stuck. Second-quarter revenue rose 92% year over year.
Why has one of the world’s most valuable companies gone nowhere as a stock? I’d point to three things: a calendar of insider share unlocks, a first earnings report that revealed staggering spending, and a valuation that assumed years of success from the start.
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More insider shares unlock every few weeks
SpaceX sold about 639 million shares in its IPO, but it has more than 13 billion outstanding. Nearly all the rest sat with insiders and early investors, barred from selling by lockup agreements — and those restrictions lift on a schedule, not all at once.
About 911 million shares became eligible to trade two trading days after the Aug. 4 earnings report, 319 million followed on Aug. 20, and 319 million more came earlier this month. Shares rose the day the first batch came free and fell about 4% on the third.
But the calendar is far from finished. Releases of about 328 million shares each are scheduled for Sept. 24, Oct. 9, and Oct. 24. Another 1.3 billion or so follow two trading days after the third-quarter report, and about 800 million more on Dec. 8. CEO Elon Musk’s stake of about 6.4 billion shares (roughly half the company) is locked up until next June.
Of course, eligible doesn’t mean sold. Still, a buyer who knows billions of shares are coming may see little reason to hurry, and that patience arguably keeps rallies from sticking.
An $18.4 billion quarter of spending
SpaceX’s first earnings report as a public company, released Aug. 4, was strong where investors usually look first. Revenue rose 92% year over year to $7.8 billion, a sharp acceleration from 15% growth in the first quarter. The net loss narrowed to $541 million from $1.0 billion a year earlier, and the loss from operations shrank to $143 million from the first quarter’s $1.9 billion.
The number that rattled investors was capital expenditures. SpaceX spent $18.4 billion in the quarter, more than double its revenue, with $15.8 billion of it in the artificial intelligence (AI) segment, home to the company’s data centers, Grok models, and X.
And the spending is climbing fast. A year earlier, AI capital expenditures were $749 million. By the first quarter of 2026 they had reached $7.7 billion, and they more than doubled again from there. The stock’s lowest close as a public company came the day after the report.
To be fair, SpaceX can fund the program for a while. The company ended June with $100 billion of cash and marketable securities, most of it from the roughly $86 billion its IPO brought in.
And the outlays are finding customers. SpaceX signed $14.1 billion of cloud services agreements during the quarter, and AI segment revenue more than tripled year over year to $2.6 billion.
What would get the stock moving?
SpaceX went public at a price that valued it near $1.8 trillion — about 94 times sales at the first quarter’s annualized pace. The market value sits near $2 trillion today, but revenue has grown so fast that the same calculation now lands around 65 times sales. In other words, the stock has spent three months growing into its price.
SpaceX said this week that Starship’s first attempt to reach orbit is now targeted for Sept. 28, after a six-day delay. A successful flight could move one of the company’s costliest projects closer to producing revenue, and it’s probably the next date that matters. But one flight can’t settle a $2 trillion price.
Ultimately, the standstill says more about the starting price than about the business. Revenue growth is accelerating and losses are shrinking. Even so, shares cost about 65 times annualized sales, and billions more of them come free by December.
I don’t think this is the right time to buy the stock. If December’s big lockup releases pass without much damage and the AI spending keeps turning into revenue, I would consider changing my mind.
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Daniel Sparks and his clients do not have positions in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
