$500 billion. That is the market value SpaceX has shed since Oct. 6, when it was worth more than $2.3 trillion. After a drop of more than 6% on Friday, Yahoo Finance puts it at about $1.8 trillion.
By the numbers
Investors will note how fast this happened: under a month, and roughly 22% off the peak. The stock closed Friday at its lowest since Aug. 20, slipping under $140, a level it had held in the sessions after the lockup ended.
The earnings pop is gone too. Shares rose about 8% on Oct. 21 when third-quarter results beat forecasts. Since then the company has lost more than $300 billion in value.
The lockup
On Oct. 22, restrictions lapsed on about 1.3 billion shares, which means a lot of stock was suddenly free to sell. For a few sessions buyers kept the price above $140. By Friday they had stopped.
Two other things landed at once. Washington began scrutinizing Starlink service slowdowns in Ukraine, and a wider tech rout hit Alphabet, Amazon and Meta.
Peers moved first, then fell together
The gap is worth a look. Between Oct. 22 and Thursday, Rocket Lab and AST SpaceMobile climbed about 10% to 17%. SpaceX went nowhere. Then on Friday the whole group sold off.
Over the longer run SpaceX looks better than its neighbors. Space stocks have lost about half their value since SpaceX listed in June, while SpaceX sits roughly 10% under its first-day open. Since Oct. 6, though, its 22% decline matches a group where most names fell 20% to 30%.
Other pressure points
Intel did not help. It reported third-quarter revenue of $16.5 billion, just above expectations, and earnings $0.12 a share better than forecast. Then came guidance: fourth-quarter earnings of $0.25 a share against a Wall Street estimate of $0.44, and revenue of no more than $16 billion against $17.1 billion expected. Northland analyst Gus Richard had looked for a beat and strong guidance, seeing the tie-up with SpaceX as a major catalyst for Intel, according to The Motley Fool.
The Motley Fool also reported that Bank of America flagged a risk to the reported SpaceX and Tesla merger: Chinese antimonopoly regulators could block it. Tesla’s Shanghai plant makes half of its cars, which gives Beijing leverage.
Levels to watch
The next floor is the summer low near $107. For bulls, the climb starts by retaking $140, then about $147, which would put the company back above $2 trillion, and finally the $150 first-day open.
The AI trade may matter more than any rocket. Yahoo Finance notes SpaceX now trades largely as an AI company, so a rebound across AI shares would probably lift it further than a good day on the pad.
Operations kept moving. On Oct. 30 a Falcon 9 flew the company’s 700th launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base, carrying 27 Starlink satellites. Ship 42 finished static fires on Oct. 26 and Oct. 27, and Booster 22 completed a 33-engine test. Starship Flight 15, expected in November, will try to catch both booster and ship. A clean catch could send shares back over $140; a miss could drag them toward $107. Elon Musk owns 39% of the company and controls 84% of the voting power.
Sources
- Elon Musk’s SpaceX loses $400 billion in market value in weeks: What’s driving SPCX stock down?
- SpaceX
- SpaceX no longer needs NASA, and that's a problem for America's space agency
- SpaceX has lost more than $500 billion in market value in less than a month
- SpaceX fires up Starship upper stage ahead of landmark Flight 15 test launch (video)
- SpaceX closes out October with Halloween eve Falcon 9 launch, 700th Falcon 9 launch to date
Photo: Gage Skidmore (CC BY-SA 4.0)
