On Tuesday, SpaceX publishes the first earnings report of its life as a public company, and the numbers will land in a tense week. Morgan Stanley has kept its $300 price target on the shares, which trade below the issue price. On Thursday, roughly $116 billion in locked-up stock becomes eligible to sell, according to filings. The two events bracket a test the market has been bracing for since the listing.
The earnings report carries a particular weight. Reuters noted that for the first time, Elon Musk’s AI spending will be laid out in full before Wall Street, inside the accounts of a listed company. Starlink’s growth, the Starship roadmap and the cost of computing capacity will have to be read together, in one document.
Starlink is the unit the market understands best. The satellite-internet business has become the company’s engine of recurring revenue, signing up users in regions where fiber never arrived and selling to airlines, ships and governments. Its subscriber growth and margins will anchor the earnings narrative.
Starship is the part that is harder to price. The giant rocket is central to the company’s long-term ambitions, but it consumes cash in development, with test flights that end in explosions as often as landings. The roadmap Musk has promised, and the spending behind it, will face scrutiny from analysts who want dates, not concepts.
The computing bill is the newest line item, and the one that draws the most attention. Musk’s AI ambitions have become entangled with SpaceX’s balance sheet in ways that were murky when the company was private. The first public report will put a number on it, and that number will be argued over for weeks.
The lockup adds a mechanical pressure. When $116 billion in restricted shares become free to trade, the supply of stock available to the market jumps overnight. Sellers may or may not appear, but the possibility alone tends to weigh on prices, analysts said.
The stock’s path since the IPO has done little to reassure. Shares trading below the issue price mean early investors are underwater, and the lockup expiry gives them a first real chance to exit. Whether they take it is the week’s open question.
Morgan Stanley’s $300 target implies a view that the current price is wrong in one direction or the other. Analysts at the bank have argued that the company’s businesses deserve to be valued on their own terms, with Starlink carrying the multiple and the rocket and compute businesses priced as options.
The earnings report will be judged against that framework. If Starlink beats, the market may forgive the AI spending. If the compute costs come in higher than expected, the below-issue price looks more like an invitation than a trap.
Analysts will be reading Starlink’s numbers for signs of slowing growth. The unit has carried the bull case with steady subscriber additions, and any softness in the trajectory will be amplified by the week’s other events. The report’s wording on average revenue per user and churn will draw as much attention as the headline revenue figure.
The lockup structure is worth parsing. The $116 billion figure represents shares that become eligible on August 6, but eligibility is not the same as selling. Many holders are employees and early backers with different tax positions and holding periods, and their decisions will unfold over months, not days. The market, however, prices the risk now.
The two events also interact. A weak report followed by a lockup expiry is the combination that historically produces the worst outcomes, heavy selling into falling prices. A strong report can flip the script, drawing buyers in before the restricted shares can move.
SpaceX executives have said little in the run-up, letting the calendar do the talking. The company’s quiet period around the listing has been disciplined, and the first report is the moment the discipline ends.
For the wider market, the report is a preview of how AI-era capital intensity will be judged in public. SpaceX is not a software company; it builds hardware, launches rockets and now runs compute. The valuation debate will turn on whether the market treats those as one business or several.
The week ends where it began, with the same uncertainty. Tuesday brings the numbers, Thursday brings the shares freed by the lockup, and the price between them will reflect every investor’s guess about which matters more. Analysts said the only certainty is volatility.
Musk’s AI spending, laid out for the first time, will be the number that defines the week’s coverage. Whether it confirms the bull case or the bear case, it will be the most cited figure in the report. Wall Street has waited a long time to see that line.
The report will also set the template for how other Musk-linked companies communicate about AI spending. Investors in his other ventures have grown used to opaque disclosures, and SpaceX’s first report offers a test of whether the numbers hold up to public scrutiny. The answer will influence how the market prices the rest of the portfolio.
