SpaceX stock fell for a second straight day in a volatile Thursday session. Wednesday was thefirst time—ever—in the company’s short history of being publicly traded, and now it’s suffered its first-ever losing streak.
New Wall Street ratings didn’t help. Neither did a potential bond offering.
Shares of Elon Musk’s AI-rocket business traded as high as $189 and as low as $172.11 before closing at $185, down 3.6%. In comparison, the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 1.1% and 0.1%, respectively.
The move came after the stock’s first down day ever. Shares dropped 5% Wednesday, closing at $191.82. Before that, they rose for three consecutive days, trading as high as $225.64, up 67% from the $135 initial public offering price.
The market didn’t help on Wednesday. The Nasdaq Composite fell 1.3% after theFederal Reserveheld interest rates steady andretail salesnumbers showed some discretionary spending weakness.
The overall market is probably a secondary factor in SpaceX trading. The stock is still very new, and things like the introduction of options trading and buying by passive exchange-traded funds are affecting stock prices.
One SpaceX-specific factor is a potential debt raise. Thursday, Bloomberg reported that SpaceX was considering a $20 billion bond offer. SpaceX didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The capital raise, after an IPO, highlights how much money SpaceX needs to build its artificial-intelligence business.
Debt might have spooked investors, but Wall Street doesn’t seem to mind. The Zephirin Group made a positive trading call on shares Tuesday evening, noting an “underappreciated supply-demand imbalance.” Only about 640 million shares are available to trade right now, which isn’t enough for the 300-plus index-tracking funds looking for SpaceX exposure.
Zephirin believes shares can hit $310 while the imbalance persists.
That was the highest price target on the Street, until Arete analyst Andrew Beale put a $401 price target and a Buy rating on SpaceX stock. Beale sees big opportunity for version three of SpaceX’s Starlink satellites, which are much more capable than version two, according to ratings aggregators. Barron’s hasn’t seen a copy of Beale’s report yet. Arete didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The v3 Starlink satellites are larger and require launch on Starship, SpaceX’s larger, fully reusable rocket system under development.
His price target values SpaceX at about $5.3 trillion, or 80 times estimated 2027 sales.
Expectations for the stock are to the moon.
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