SpaceX’s first quarterly results as a public company beat expectations, but AI costs hit stock
FILE PHOTO: A live feed shows SpaceX CEO Elon Musk on the day of SpaceX’s initial public offering (IPO) at the Nasdaq MarketSite, in New York City, U.S., June 12, 2026. REUTERS/Jeenah Moon/File Photo
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NEW YORK, Aug 4 : SpaceX on Tuesday posted its first quarterly results as a public company, highlighting a 92 per cent rise in revenue on strong growth in its Starlink satellite-internet and AI businesses, and announced a datacenter-chip partnership with Nvidia.
Revenue for the second quarter ended in June rose to $7.8 billion from $4.1 billion a year earlier, beating the $6.9 billion consensus estimate. The firm lost 9 cents a share, beating the 26-cent loss expected by analysts. CEO Elon Musk said on a conference call with analysts and investors that SpaceX expects to receive a “significant percentage” of Nvidia’s sought-after graphics processing units next year.
Shares fell 7 per cent in late trading on Tuesday after rising 9.4 per cent in regular action.
The report has been widely anticipated on Wall Street in part because the earnings release will be followed this week by the unlock of 911 million shares previously subject to restrictions – an event that stands to add to the already significant pressure on the shares of Musk’s rockets-and-AI firm.
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SpaceX has risen more than 10 per cent this week but remains below the $135-a-share price at which it raised $75 billion in June in the largest-ever public offering. The stock’s decline means that an additional 455 million shares that could have been unlocked this week had SpaceX shares risen above certain stated thresholds will remain ineligible for release for now.
COMMENTS:
KEN HERBERT, AEROSPACE & DEFENSE ANALYST, RBC CAPITAL MARKETS, SAN FRANCISCO:
“We view the results as positive. The company delivered on both the top and bottom lines, which we believe could provide a lift to investor expectations for SPCX’s ability to deliver on near-term financials.”
THOMAS MONTEIRO, SENIOR ANALYST AT INVESTING.COM:
“The central question for SpaceX’s first quarter as a public company was whether the machine underneath the story actually works, and on that question Elon Musk and his team delivered a few positives.
“The AI segment also surprised to the upside, moving from a pure cash sink toward something with a visible commercial engine, and management pressed the advantage with the Cursor acquisition. The caveats have not gone away. The revenue still leans on a short list of large customers, and the new deal raises the stakes rather than lowering them, but the direction of travel this quarter was clearly bullish.
“The harder read is the quality of that profit beat. The impressive profitability headline is largely a function of what gets added back, chiefly depreciation, and beneath it is a company still building at extraordinary intensity, running close to breakeven at the operating line and consuming cash at a rate few businesses could carry.”
BRIAN MULBERRY, CHIEF MARKET STRATEGIST AT ZACKS INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT, GOLDEN, COLORADO:
“The two things that stood out to me are the doubling of Starlink subscriptions from 6 million to 12 million…and then the actual AI revenue was up 350 per cent. … Those two numbers were absolutely the biggest outperforming data points.
“I think that’s a tremendous upside surprise today alone is the fact that AI is already monetizing itself. They’re not relying on Starlink to fund operations there. I think that’s a huge part of the story.
“If they can continue to build on this number and continue to monetize AI directly, then it really does soften our concerns about the capex being a little bit too heavy. I think that this is one of those types of results that will change our thinking and might move up our scale in terms of when we want to take a position.”
ADAM SARHAN, CHIEF EXECUTIVE, 50 PARK INVESTMENTS, NEW YORK:
“They made it very clear this is not a quarter-by-quarter play. Elon’s mission is a long-term mission… it’s perfectly normal to see fluctuations around highly anticipated IPOs within the first year, if not the first two years, of coming out and starting to trade.
“Revenue jumped 92 per cent but AI costs were high. But revenue jumped, so clearly they’re doing something right.
“But they have to meet and exceed Wall Street’s already lofty expectations, and that becomes a very difficult thing for any company to do let alone an extremely popular IPO.”
Source: Reuters
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