SpaceX's stock (SPCX) fell below its $135 IPO price after a crucial Starship test flight was aborted on July 16. The decline erased a significant portion of the company's post-IPO gains, with its market cap falling from a peak of $2.8T. The drop comes as investors weigh bullish analyst targets against an upcoming share unlock that could flood the market and as short sellers accumulate $8.7B in profits.
SpaceX stock decline
- ▪After peaking at $225.64 following its June 2026 IPO, SpaceX's stock has lost approximately 42% of its value
- ▪Following the scrubbed launch, SpaceX's stock (SPCX) fell below its $135 IPO price for the first time, closing at $131.11
- ▪A test flight of SpaceX's Starship rocket was aborted at the last minute on July 16, 2026, after some engines failed to ignite
- ▪Short sellers betting against SpaceX have accumulated an estimated $8.7 billion in paper profits from the stock's decline
- ▪The stock's decline reduced SpaceX's market capitalization to approximately $1.8 trillion from a peak of over $2.8 trillion
- ▪The price of SpaceX's longest-dated bonds fell 9.3% to 90.7 cents on the dollar, pushing their effective yield to a junk-like rate of 7.5%
- ▪Elon Musk announced that two Raptor engines would be replaced, with the next launch attempt probable for the following week
Crypto derivatives exposure
- ▪Open interest in these crypto-based perpetual contracts peaked at about $860 million in late June and has remained mostly above $600 million
- ▪SpaceX-linked perpetual futures on crypto exchanges held about $615 million in open interest as of early July 17, 2026
Tokenized stock products
- ▪A tokenized instrument called SpaceX xStock, designed to track the company's shares, held nearly $25 million in assets across over 7,800 holders
- ▪The SpaceX xStock token generated about $313 million in transfer volume in the month prior to mid-July 2026
Upcoming share unlock
- ▪The upcoming share unlock could release shares worth about $123 billion, significantly increasing the publicly available float of $86 billion
- ▪Employees and early investors will be eligible to sell 911.5 million shares after SpaceX's first quarterly results, expected in early August 2026
- ▪By December 8, 2026, as much as 40% of SpaceX's total shares could be eligible for public trading
Analyst perspectives
- ▪Shortly before the stock's decline, 17 underwriting banks issued bullish price targets for SpaceX, with a median target of $225
- ▪One bearish analyst, former Fidelity manager George Noble, argues SpaceX's fair value is about $30 per share due to an artificially small IPO float
- ▪The analysts' price targets ranged from a low of $190 (Stifel) to a high of $800 (Raymond James)
- ▪Despite the stock's fall, 27 of 32 analysts tracked by LSEG maintained a "buy" recommendation for SpaceX
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