SpaceX went public in June in the largest IPO in American history, and the stock has already cratered 19% below its offer price and 51% below its single-day high. Now comes earnings. Now comes Elon.
The Biggest IPO Ever Is Already Underwater
Let's set the scene. SpaceX priced its IPO at $135 a share. On its first day of trading, the stock shot up to $225.64 intraday — the kind of number that makes retail investors feel like geniuses and makes short sellers feel nauseated. That was June 16. It is now August, and the stock is sitting around $110. The largest public offering in U.S. history has, within roughly six weeks, become a loss for anyone who bought in at the offer price.
The company drops its first earnings report Tuesday after markets close, followed by an analyst call. According to CBS News, the report will be the first detailed public look at SpaceX's finances since the IPO, and Wall Street is watching with the kind of intensity usually reserved for a Fed rate decision or a Trump Truth Social post that moves markets.
The Numbers That Actually Matter Here
Here is what we know going in. SpaceX booked $18.7 billion in revenue last year, according to a regulatory filing — but it also burned through more than $4.9 billion in net losses. That is not a profitable company. That is a very expensive rocket-and-satellite hobby with a stock price attached to it.
For the second quarter, S&P Global's Melissa Otto expects SpaceX to report around $6.9 billion in revenue, driven primarily by Starlink, the broadband satellite network that is genuinely the company's most coherent and functional business. Starlink subscriber growth is expected to come in at around 93% for 2026, per Morningstar analyst Nicolas Owens — which sounds impressive until you note that the 2025 growth rate was 229%. The trajectory is decelerating. That matters.
The AI Bet Nobody Has Proven Out Yet
SpaceX's AI segment pulled in $818 million in revenue in the first quarter of 2026, per a securities filing. That sounds like a real number until you remember the company is valued at $1.4 trillion and losing nearly $5 billion a year. The math only works if the AI business becomes something enormous, and right now it is a $818 million quarter in a division that is trying to run data centers in orbit while also managing Grok, the AI chatbot SpaceX acquired when it bought xAI in February.
CBS News reports that investors will also be watching for updates on Cursor, the AI coding startup SpaceX recently acquired, and what role it plays in the Grok roadmap. IPO expert Jay Ritter of the University of Florida told CBS News that if SpaceX can grow the AI segment meaningfully, "it could be an important source of revenue in the next few years." That is a very careful way of saying it is not an important source of revenue right now.
The Real Event Is Whatever Elon Says on the Call
Here is the uncomfortable truth about SpaceX as a public company: the stock is not really priced on current financials. It is priced on vibes, vision, and Elon Musk's ability to convince investors that the future he describes will eventually arrive. Dan Ives of Yorkville Ives & Co. told CBS News that sentiment will "largely hinge on the tone and vision" Musk sets on the earnings call, not the numbers themselves.
That is both a reasonable assessment and a pretty damning one. What Ives is describing is a company where a $1.4 trillion valuation rests substantially on whether the CEO sounds confident and compelling on a Tuesday evening phone call. SpaceX needs to give investors "near-term targets they can hit," Ives said, because the stock is built on longer-term promises. Promises, in other words, that have not been kept yet.
Thursday Is When It Gets Really Interesting
Even if the earnings call goes fine, Tuesday is not the end of the story. On Thursday, more than 911 million SpaceX shares worth roughly $100 billion will hit the market as the IPO lockup period expires. That is not a typo. One hundred billion dollars in shares becoming tradeable in a single day, for a stock that is already down 19%.
Short sellers have already made more than $8 billion betting against SpaceX, according to Ritter. But he told CBS News that some of those shorts are expected to cover their positions when the lockup ends, which would actually soften the blow by creating buying pressure to absorb shares that existing shareholders decide to dump. "This short covering will reduce the drop that otherwise will be occurring on Thursday," he said. So the good news is: Thursday might not be a complete catastrophe. That is the good news.
The Dingo Take
You are supposed to believe that a company losing $4.9 billion a year is worth $1.4 trillion because someday, somehow, the rockets and the satellites and the AI chatbot and the coding startup and the space-based data centers will all click into place and print money. Maybe they will. Stranger things have happened. But right now, SpaceX is a story stock in the oldest and most dangerous sense — a company priced not on what it earns but on what people believe it might earn, denominated in trust that Elon Musk will eventually deliver.
The problem is that Elon Musk has spent the last year running the Department of Government Efficiency into the ground, getting publicly humiliated in a feud with his own president, and watching his other public company, Tesla, get absolutely hammered by consumer boycotts and cratering sales. He is not exactly on a hot streak. And now he has to get on an earnings call and convince investors that the man who just lived through all of that is still the visionary who can make a $1.4 trillion valuation make sense.
Thursday's lockup expiration is the real tell. When a hundred billion dollars in stock becomes sellable and insiders decide what to do with it, that is when you find out what the people closest to the company actually think it is worth. Watch that number. Not whatever Musk says on the call.
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