Musk vs. Short Sellers: SpaceX Stock Bounces from 52-Week Low as First Earnings Report and Starship Re-test Approach
Published on 07/21/2026 at 17:43 | Redaktion boerse-global.de
Seven straight days of declines had dragged SpaceX stock to a new low of 104.88 euros on Monday, wiping nearly half its value off the June record. But the downturned reversed sharply on Tuesday, with shares jumping 6.59% to close at 111.88 euros — a rally fueled by a company announcement and a fresh broadside from Elon Musk aimed at the bears.
The trigger was twofold. SpaceX confirmed that its first-ever quarterly report as a public company will be released on August 4, after the U.S. market close, with a conference call scheduled for 4:30 p.m. Eastern time. And Musk took to X to warn that firms maintaining "significant" short positions against SpaceX face a "very high probability" of not surviving. Short sellers had built bets equivalent to roughly a third of the free float — some 29% to 30% of the tradable shares, according to the secondary source — and had already booked paper profits of about $5 billion during the selloff.
The stock's collapse came fast after a stunning debut. Priced at $135 in the June 12 IPO, the shares opened at $150 and surged to an all-time closing high of $225.64 on June 16, valuing the company at over $2.6 trillion. But the run ended abruptly when SpaceX announced a bond issuance of at least $20 billion, which erased roughly $600 billion in market capitalization within three days. The stock then slipped further amid operational setbacks and mounting lockup anxiety.
That lockup is now front and center. SpaceX chose a staggered release model at the IPO: with the first quarterly report, insiders will be able to sell one-fifth of their restricted shares — 911.5 million units, worth about $109.2 billion at Monday's close of $119.85. If the stock trades at least 30% above the IPO price for five of the ten trading days before the report, an additional 10% of restricted shares becomes tradable. A further 1.37 billion shares are scheduled for release by August 17, making the lockup unwind a multi-week overhang.
Should investors sell immediately? Or is it worth buying SpaceX?
The earnings themselves will offer the first detailed look at SpaceX's finances since going public. Investors will focus on Starlink, which now counts roughly 10.3 million subscribers and saw revenue jump 50% year over year, and on the margins of the Falcon-9 business. Also under scrutiny will be capital expenditures related to Starship and the company's AI venture xAI, which recorded $7.72 billion in spending in the first quarter alone. For the full year 2025, SpaceX posted a loss of $4.3 billion, and the Grok-and-X unit remains unprofitable.
Starship's struggles have added to the volatility. A test flight on July 16 was aborted when Raptor engines failed to ignite during the countdown. SpaceX swapped the faulty engines and now aims for a second attempt on July 23 at 6:45 p.m. Eastern from Starbase in Texas. Dubbed Flight 13, the mission is the second test of the V3 version and is designed to deploy 20 Starlink V3 satellites on a suborbital trajectory, followed by a Super Heavy booster splashdown in the Gulf of America and a controlled ocean landing of the upper stage. The original abort reportedly erased about $100 billion in market value. Musk described the glitch as an automatic launch abort triggered by a failure of some engines to start; SpaceX says it is making modifications to the propulsion system.
Analyst opinions remain deeply split. Deutsche Bank maintains a buy rating with a $255 target, while Morgan Stanley sees a $300 price objective and projects 2030 revenue reaching $319 billion. The consensus among analysts tracking the stock stands at 30 buys, six holds, and one sell, with a median target of $235.34. Cathie Wood's ARK funds took advantage of the weakness, purchasing 170,634 shares at an average price of $120.14 for $20.5 million on July 20, bringing total holdings past 4 million shares. Wood values SpaceX at $2.5 trillion to $3.1 trillion. On the other side, investor Whitney Tilson warns the stock is overvalued given a price-to-sales multiple of roughly 92 times.
SpaceX at a turning point? This analysis reveals what investors need to know now.
With the relative strength index at 39 signaling oversold conditions, Tuesday's bounce still leaves the stock more than 42% below its 52-week high. The weeks ahead will pack three major catalysts into a narrow window: the Starship test on July 23, the August 4 earnings release, and the subsequent unlock of hundreds of millions of insider shares. Given an annualized 30-day volatility of 92.71%, the summer is likely to stay turbulent.
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