SpaceX Short Sellers Have $25 Billion Riding on the Company’s First Earnings Report
Published on 07/25/2026 at 04:11 | Redaktion boerse-global.de
The clock is ticking toward August 4, when SpaceX will publish its first quarterly earnings as a publicly traded company — and the stakes could hardly be higher. Short sellers have piled on a record $25 billion in bearish bets, representing roughly 32 percent of the freely tradable shares, according to data from S3 Partners. That figure has exploded from just 5 to 7 percent a month ago.
The stock closed the week at €101.18, down 6.61 percent over five trading days and a staggering 25.71 percent over the past month. From its all-time high of €194.46, the shares have now shed nearly half their value. At one point during the week, the stock touched a fresh 52-week low of €97.54 before staging intraday recoveries that repeatedly fizzled.
Alphabet, the Google parent company that invested alongside Fidelity in January 2015 when SpaceX was valued at just $12 billion, now holds a stake worth $94.1 billion. That disclosure came in Alphabet’s own quarterly filing, which revealed that its combined realized and unrealized gains from SpaceX and its Anthropic investment totaled $99.0 billion in the second quarter. But the vast majority of that paper wealth is locked away: $80 billion is subject to short-term sale restrictions, and another $14.1 billion cannot be sold until the third quarter of 2027.
The lock-up structure is no accident. If anchor investors like Alphabet were to dump their holdings all at once, the already fragile stock could face a flood of supply. The first wave of insider selling is directly tied to the earnings release. On the second full trading day after the report, investors will be permitted to sell 20 percent of their locked shares — up to 911.5 million shares. An additional 10 percent could be unlocked if the stock closes at least 30 percent above its $135 IPO price on five of the ten trading days before the report. The current price of €101.18, roughly $110, is far from that threshold.
Should investors sell immediately? Or is it worth buying SpaceX?
Elon Musk took to X to address the short-selling surge, warning that companies with persistently high short positions against SpaceX have “a very low probability of survival.” He also reiterated his long-standing claim that the company will eventually be worth more than the Earth itself.
Analysts caution against reading the short buildup as a simple bet on a falling stock. Matthew Unterman, director of research at S3 Partners, told CNBC that short sellers are systematically expanding their positions ahead of multiple catalysts — first and foremost the earnings report and the subsequent lock-up expirations.
The stock’s annualized volatility has hit 67.12 percent, a level that underscores the extreme nervousness surrounding the name. The relative strength index stands at 33.9, technically in oversold territory, though that alone offers no guarantee of a rebound. On Thursday, SpaceX slid to a new year low alongside Oracle and QuantumScape during a broader tech sell-off, falling decisively below its IPO price.
SpaceX at a turning point? This analysis reveals what investors need to know now.
Despite the rout, the valuation remains ambitious. SpaceX still trades at more than 80 times revenue, while the company says its business is growing at roughly 33 percent annually. The August 4 earnings call will pit two opposing camps against each other: those betting the numbers will justify the lofty multiple, and those who see their growing short positions vindicated.
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