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Delayed · 00:33 UK

SpaceX Stock Price Crash Leaves Early Investors Down 32% in a Month

The SpaceX stock price crash has wiped roughly a third of the value off Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SPCX) since it listed, with shares closing at $108.37 on 31 July 2026, according to Yahoo Finance. An investor who put £5,000 into the company one month ago would be sitting on a paper loss of around £1,600.

The stock now trades 19% below its IPO price of $135, having opened at $150 on its first day of trading, an 11% premium to the offer price. Nasdaq described the listing as the largest initial public offering in Wall Street history, with SpaceX raising $75 billion.

How SpaceX stock price crash unfolded after the IPO

The SpaceX S-1 filing submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) set the maximum offering price at $162.00 per share, covering up to 55,555,555 Class A shares, with an expected IPO price of $135.00. At the close on 31 July 2026, the implied market capitalisation stood at approximately $1.428 trillion, down from roughly $1.77 trillion at IPO.

The valuation concern was present from day one. At listing, Morningstar estimated the company was worth less than half its IPO target price, according to a report cited by the Nasdaq newsroom.

SpaceX pays no dividend. The company is lossmaking: trailing earnings per share stand at -$0.67, and net income available to common shareholders over the trailing twelve months was -$9.36 billion on revenue of $19.3 billion, per Yahoo Finance.

The underlying business: strong revenue, heavy reinvestment

The operational picture is more complex than a simple loss figure suggests. SpaceX reported total revenue of $18.67 billion for full-year 2025 in its S-1, up from $14.02 billion in 2024 and $10.39 billion in 2023. First-quarter 2026 revenue came in at $4.69 billion, against $4.07 billion in the same period a year earlier.

The Starlink connectivity segment is the engine. It generated $11.39 billion in revenue in 2025, up 49.8% from $7.60 billion in 2024, and delivered $4.42 billion in operating profit, with operating income rising 120% year-on-year. Connectivity gross margins improved from 37% in 2024 to 48% in 2025, according to OpenBook Analytics.

Starlink had 10.3 million subscribers across 164 countries as of 31 March 2026, up from 8.9 million at end-2025 and 2.3 million at end-2023. The space segment added a further $3.20 billion in 2025 revenue, up 22.2% from $2.62 billion in 2024.

Reinvestment is running at an exceptional rate. According to valuation analyst Aswath Damodaran, citing S-1 prospectus data, SpaceX spent almost $14 billion in capital expenditure and almost $9 billion in R&D in 2025, roughly doubling reinvestment from 2024. The US government (NASA, the Department of Defence, and intelligence agencies) contributed $5.9 billion of 2025 revenue.

On an adjusted EBITDA basis SpaceX reported $6.58 billion for 2025. Even so, the EV/EBITDA multiple at the late-July 2026 share price was in the region of 220 to 230 times, per OpenBook Analytics. The trailing price-to-sales ratio had compressed to around 55 to 60 times from roughly 89 times at listing.

One structural complication for investors attempting to value individual business lines: the S-1 registration statement bundles Starlink and Starship into a single consolidated entity rather than separate financial segments, as noted by Exterra JSC in its prospectus review.

A paper loss is not a realised one. Investors who held through the opening-day premium and the subsequent slide have not locked in losses unless they have sold. The 32% decline from the post-listing peak is painful on paper; the underlying revenue trajectory and Starlink subscriber growth remain intact.

The binary for holders is clear: the consensus analyst 12-month price target sits at $236.71, per Yahoo Finance, implying more than double the current price. Getting there requires the market to accept a valuation that Morningstar flagged as excessive at $135. SPCX’s 52-week range runs from $107.01 to $225.64; how close the stock gets to either end will depend heavily on whether Starlink’s margin expansion continues through the rest of 2026.

Published by Financial News

Written by

Martin Holloway

Martin Holloway spent the better part of two decades on bank trading floors in the City before he started filing copy. He read Economics at a redbrick university, joined a graduate scheme at one of the UK clearers in the late 1990s, and moved across to fixed income early in his career. The bulk of his time was on macro…

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