SpaceX closed Friday at its lowest level since Aug. 20. The bottom line: SPCX has fallen nearly 24% from its $176.42 peak on October 6 to $134.50, and the supply of shares that can legally be sold keeps growing.
By the numbers, the damage is large. Yahoo Finance reported that the slide has erased more than $500 billion in market value since the October 6 high, when the company was worth more than $2.3 trillion. It is now worth about $1.83 trillion. The stock dropped more than 6% on Friday alone.
The unlock
Market analyst Ali Charts laid out the supply side in a five-part thread on X. Nearly 2 billion shares came free to sell in October, which he put at roughly $307 billion in potential selling pressure. The biggest single release came on October 22, when about 1.3 billion shares became tradable.
An unlock does not create shares. It lets holders sell stock that was restricted before. Whether they do is their choice, and affiliates are capped under Rule 144 at the greater of 1% of outstanding shares or the average weekly trading volume over three months.
Investors will note how much stock has been released overall. Through October 26, about 3.89 billion shares had cleared lockup across eight events in under three months. Add the 638.9 million sold in the June IPO and the estimated total eligible to trade reaches 4.53 billion shares. That is an estimate drawn from prospectus tracking, and it excludes verified insider sales.
Another large unlock is scheduled for June 2027. At today’s price it could free over $900 billion in stock, nearly three times October’s total, though the figure moves with the share price.
Paying 57 times sales
The figure that matters here is the multiple. With a $1.83 trillion market cap and $32 billion in annual revenue, SpaceX trades at roughly 57 times sales. Ali Charts ran the reverse math. At 30x, revenue would have to reach $61 billion. At 20x, $91.5 billion. At 10x, $183 billion, nearly six times today’s.
The business itself is not weak. Third-quarter revenue came in at $14.60 billion against a $13.02 billion consensus, and the stock jumped about 8% on October 21. Net income was $4.40 billion, versus a loss of $1.10 billion a year earlier. AI Solutions revenue rose 830% year over year to $8 billion. Of the analysts covering the stock, 30 of 38 rate it a buy or strong buy, with an average price target of $256.59.
The gains vanished anyway. The stock held above $140 for days after the October 22 unlock, then broke below it on Friday.
Peers, Starlink and Intel
Since the June debut, space stocks have lost about half their value, while SpaceX is down about 10% from its first-day open. Since October 6, its roughly 22% decline matches a group where most names fell 20% to 30%. After the unlock, though, Rocket Lab and AST SpaceMobile bounced about 10% to 17% through Thursday while SpaceX went nowhere. On Friday every one of them fell.
The selling also came as Starlink faced scrutiny in Washington over service slowdowns in Ukraine, and as a tech rout hit Alphabet, Amazon and Meta. Intel gave a weak outlook as well. It projected fourth-quarter earnings of $0.25 per share against Wall Street’s $0.44, and revenue of no more than $16 billion against $17.1 billion expected. Northland analyst Gus Richard had seen the Intel partnership with SpaceX as a major catalyst for Intel’s stock. Bank of America, meanwhile, flagged that Chinese antimonopoly regulators could block a reported SpaceX-Tesla merger, pointing to Tesla’s Shanghai plant, which makes half its output.
Levels to watch
The next floor is near the summer low of $107 or $108, depending on the analyst. Bulls need $140 back first, then about $147, which would restore a $2 trillion valuation, and then the $150 first-day open. Starship Flight 15 is expected next month, with an attempt to catch both the booster and the ship. A clean catch could win back $140. A failure would put the summer lows in play.
Sources
- SpaceX Stock Falls 24% as $300 Billion in Share Unlocks Hit the Market – Blockonomi
- SpaceX has lost more than $500 billion in market value in less than a month
- Elon Musk’s SpaceX loses $400 billion in market value in weeks: What’s driving SPCX stock down?
- SpaceX Insiders Could Sell Nearly 4 Billion Shares. Why Isn’t Wall Street Worried?
- SpaceX Insiders Could Sell Nearly 4 Billion Shares. Why Isn't Wall Street Worried?
Photo: Steve Jurvetson (CC BY 2.0)
