Key points
- SpaceX (SPCX) reports Q2 after the close Aug. 4. Consensus is $6.88B revenue and about a $0.23 loss.
- On Aug. 6, up to 911.5M shares unlock. The tradable float is about 646M.
- A second tranche of 455.8M shares needed a $175.50 close. SPCX has not closed there since June 18.
- Morgan Stanley targets $300 with $152 of it on AI. HSBC says hold at $115.
Update: what actually printed
They beat, and not by a little. Revenue came in at $7.81 billion against the $6.88 billion the Street wanted, up 92% from a year ago. The loss was $0.09 a share, not the $0.23 anyone modeled. Adjusted EBITDA nearly tripled to $3.54 billion.
| Q2 2026 | Street | Actual |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue | $6.88B | $7.81B |
| EPS | -$0.23 | -$0.09 |
| Connectivity | $3.83B | $4.29B |
| AI | $2.18B | $2.56B |
| Space | $835M | $962M |
Starlink landed on exactly 12.0 million subscribers, the top of the range laid out below, and that's double where it was a year ago. ARPU held at $66 for a second straight quarter. Connectivity's operating income grew 79% to $1.66 billion. The AI segment posted its first positive adjusted EBITDA at $1.15 billion, after losing $609 million on that line in Q1.
So I got the test I asked for. AI had to clear $2.18 billion. It cleared it by $381 million.
The quarter was good. Thursday is what's being priced
SPCX closed regular hours Tuesday at $125.33, up 9.43%. Then the release hit and it fell to $114.33 inside the hour. Wednesday morning it traded as low as $109.21 and sat at $114.30 at 10:22 a.m. ET. Every bit of Tuesday's gain is gone and it's trading under where that session opened.
That isn't the market grading the quarter. There wasn't anything in the print to sell. What's two days out is 911.5 million shares landing on a float of about 646 million, and nobody wants to be the one holding when 1.4 times the float goes looking for a bid. You don't pay up Wednesday for something you think you can buy cheaper Thursday.
The one number a bear could point at is capex. It was $18.37 billion for the quarter, with $15.83 billion of that inside the AI segment, against $749 million a year ago. That's more than five times the adjusted EBITDA they just reported, spent in three months. They also announced a $60 billion agreement to buy Cursor, closing in Q3. They can fund all of it. There's $100 billion in cash and marketable securities and $47.5 billion of backlog. What nobody can price yet is what the spending earns and when.
So the piece below holds up. A good quarter two days ahead of the unlock doesn't buy you anything, and that's what I said going in. I still don't own it. I'm still watching Thursday.
SpaceX reports today after the market closes. It is its first quarter as a public company. The call starts at 4:30 p.m. ET. The date I have circled is Thursday.
On Aug. 6, two trading days after the print, up to 911.5 million SpaceX (SPCX) shares come unlocked. The tradable float today is about 646 million. So the supply headed for the tape is roughly 1.4 times everything that changes hands now, worth about $104 billion at Monday's close.
Nicolas Owens at Morningstar doesn't expect much of it to sit still. "We believe that most of the available shares will come to market, because the existing sellers have low-cost basis and long holding periods," he said. He's talking about employees who have been holding paper since long before the listing.
The bigger tranche is already dead
The unlock has a second piece, and it isn't happening. Another 455.8 million shares were set to be released alongside the first block, but only if SPCX closed at $175.50 or higher on five of the ten trading days leading up to the earnings date. That level is a 30% premium to the $135 IPO price. The stock hasn't closed there since June 18 and hasn't touched it intraday since June 22. So Thursday's release stops at 911.5 million shares.
The supply doesn't end there either. Smaller tranches continue to be released through October, and the full backstop runs out on Dec. 8.
Elon Musk hasn't been quiet heading in. On Aug. 1, he posted on X that SpaceX could add annualized revenue equal to the current size of Tesla (TSLA) within 12 to 24 months, which is roughly $95 billion to $104 billion, and tacked on "few people understand this." His own shares stay locked until the middle of 2027, along with a select group of insiders.
What the print has to carry
Wall Street wants $6.88 billion in revenue and a loss of about $0.23 a share. Morgan Stanley models it a little lighter, at $6.75 billion and a $0.35 adjusted loss. The three segments break out like this:
- Connectivity (Starlink): about $3.83 billion, up 17.5% from Q1. Consumer subscribers were 10.3 million in Q1 and could reach 12 million, at roughly $65.50 a month each.
- AI: $818 million in Q1, with $2.18 billion expected here. The xAI and X businesses folded in during February.
- Space: launch revenue growing about 35%, to $835 million.
Connectivity is the piece actually paying the bills. It turned $11.4 billion of revenue into $4.4 billion of operating income in 2025, and that operating income more than doubled from the year before. The economics swing hard by customer type. A residential subscriber is worth about $960 a year, while a single Starlink-equipped aircraft brings in around $300,000.
Don't put much weight on the headline beat or miss. Consensus EPS runs from a loss of $1.26 a share all the way up to a profit of $0.33. When the estimates are scattered that wide, whatever prints tonight will be a beat or a miss depending on which analyst you asked. Nobody has a history to model against, since no analyst has ever seen an audited SpaceX quarter and the xAI and X businesses have only been inside the company since February.
The ratings disagree just as hard. Adam Jonas at Morgan Stanley has an Overweight and a $300 target, calls the company "uniquely positioned across launch, connectivity, and AI," and says "the market is still significantly underestimating the long-term value of the company's AI business." HSBC opened coverage at Hold with a $115 target, within a few dollars of where the stock trades now.
Break that $300 into pieces, and the rockets barely register. Starlink carries about $128 of it and enterprise AI another $152. X and Grok add roughly $12, the traditional space business about $8. More than half the target rests on the AI segment, so the Starship updates and the launch cadence matter less to that math than the capex line does. Capex is running near $48.7 billion for 2026.
Where I stand
The stock went into this beaten up and then bounced hard. SPCX closed at $108.37 on July 31, opened Monday at $106.40, then traded down to $104.83, a record low. It finished Monday at $114.53, which still leaves it 43% below its June 16 close of $201.80 and 15% under the $135 IPO price. It's changed hands between $115.72 and $121.85 on Tuesday morning. On Friday we walked through how the whole space group came apart, and back on July 15 we flagged the valuation problem.
The other half of Thursday is the short base. S3 Partners counted $26 billion of short interest on July 29, about 35% of the float, with shorts up $7.3 billion. A supply shock landing on a position that crowded can cut either way. Monday's 9% reversal off the low is a small version of the same fight.
Let me be clear about the long game, because I do believe in this company. Starlink already throws off real operating income and it more than doubled last year. Starship gets where it's going on a timeline measured in years. Ask me whether SpaceX is worth owning ten years from now and my answer is an absolute yes, without much hesitation.
The horizon is the whole issue. A ten-year conviction pays nothing on a Thursday when 911.5 million shares land on a float of 646 million. I can believe in 2036 and still not want to own this tape in August.
I'm not buying it into the print. A good quarter tonight doesn't change what shows up two days later, and I'd rather watch how much of the 911.5 million actually hits the tape before paying for the story. If the AI segment clears $2.18 billion and the stock still can't hold $115 by Friday, I'll take that as the more useful signal.
Disclosure: I hold no position in any stock mentioned. Not investment advice.
Sources
- SpaceX investor relations: second quarter 2026 results and webcast scheduled for Aug. 4, 2026, at 3:30 p.m. CT / 4:30 p.m. ET. The company listed on Nasdaq on June 12, 2026 at $135 a share.
- Lockup terms: first tranche of 911.5 million shares releasing Aug. 6, 2026, two trading days after earnings; a further 455.8 million shares contingent on SPCX closing at $175.50 or higher, a 30% premium to the $135 IPO price, on five of ten trading days into the earnings date; smaller tranches through October and a full backstop expiring Dec. 8, 2026; Musk and select insiders locked until mid-2027.
- Q2 2026 estimates: $6.88 billion revenue and a $0.23 per-share loss consensus; Morgan Stanley at $6.75 billion and a $0.35 adjusted loss with an Overweight rating and $300 target broken into roughly $128 Starlink, $152 enterprise AI, $12 X and Grok, $8 traditional space; segment expectations of $3.83 billion connectivity, $2.18 billion AI (from $818 million in Q1) and $835 million launch; Starlink at 10.3 million Q1 consumer subscribers and about $65.50 monthly ARPU; 2026 capex near $48.7 billion. Full consensus EPS range of a $1.26 loss to a $0.33 profit. HSBC initiated at Hold with a $115 target.
- 2025 segment figures: Connectivity revenue of $11.4 billion and operating income of $4.4 billion, with Starlink operating income more than doubling year over year; residential revenue of about $960 per subscriber annually and about $300,000 per aircraft in the aviation line.
- Analyst comments from Nicolas Owens (Morningstar) and Adam Jonas (Morgan Stanley), July 2026. Elon Musk post on X, Aug. 1, 2026, projecting SpaceX could add annualized revenue equal to Tesla's current size, about $95 billion to $104 billion, within 12 to 24 months.
- S3 Partners via Benzinga, July 29, 2026: $26 billion short interest, about 35% of float, $7.3 billion mark-to-market profit.
- Prices from daily closes through Aug. 3, 2026 and intraday quotes on Aug. 4, 2026. Float of 645,999,163 shares and 13.27 billion shares outstanding per market data on Aug. 4, 2026. The $104.83 low on Aug. 3, 2026 is the 52-week low and the lowest level since the June 12 listing.
