Markets
SpaceX Reports Its First Full Quarter as a Public Company on Tuesday. The Shares Fell 10% Into It
SpaceX (SPCX) closed at $146.03 on October 16, down 10.17% on the week and 17% below its $176.42 high since the June listing. Third-quarter results come after the close on October 20. The second quarter showed revenue of $7.8 billion, up 92%, a $541 million net loss and $18.4 billion of capital spending.
The most watched earnings report of the week is not from one of the companies that has done this a hundred times. SpaceX, which listed on the Nasdaq in June under the ticker SPCX, publishes its third-quarter results after the close on Tuesday, October 20, with an audio webcast at 4:30 p.m. ET. It is the company's first report covering a full quarter as a public company, and the shares have been falling into it: $163.42 on Monday, $156.54, $152.16, $148.62 and finally $146.03 on Friday, down 10.17% on the week and 17.2% below the $176.42 high reached since the listing.
The second quarter, reported in August, set the frame. Revenue was $7.8 billion, up 92% from a year earlier; the net loss was $541 million. Connectivity, the segment that includes Starlink, produced $4.3 billion, up 66%. The AI segment produced $2.6 billion of revenue and a $1.26 billion operating loss. Capital spending was $18.4 billion in the quarter, of which $15.8 billion went to AI infrastructure: the company is spending more than twice its revenue on building out compute, which is why the stock trades with CoreWeave and Nebius rather than with Boeing.
That association is the problem this week. CoreWeave lost 25% and Nebius 25% in the five sessions to Friday as investors repriced debt-funded AI infrastructure; SpaceX, which has financed its build-out largely with equity, fell less, but it fell for the same reason. The Nasdaq's 4.48% weekly decline was its worst since June. On Friday SpaceX lost 1.74% on a day the Nasdaq fell 2.15%, which counts as relative strength in this tape.
Analysts have not cut their numbers. Evercore ISI raised its price target to $275 from $230 ahead of the report, and the questions on Tuesday will be about the rate of AI revenue growth against the rate of AI spending, Starlink subscriber additions, and whether the company gives any guidance on when the AI segment stops losing money. The Terafab chip factory planned with Tesla at Giga Texas is likely to come up, since Tesla reports the next evening.
For traders the mechanics matter as much as the numbers. A company reporting its first full public quarter has no history of how its stock reacts to results, no established pattern of beating or missing its own guidance, and a shareholder base still made up largely of people who bought at the IPO. Options markets price large moves for such names, and the post-close session on Tuesday will be thin. The result will be known at 4:01 p.m. ET; the price the market settles on will take until Wednesday's open.