Elon Musk’s American space company SpaceX, known for its Falcon rockets and Starlink, lost value after its first report as a public company. Fortune reports, writes UNN.
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SpaceX lost nearly $500 billion in market value after reaching a peak of $2 trillion following the IPO in June. The first financial report as a public company gave Elon Musk an opportunity to convince investors of SpaceX’s continued growth.
The company demonstrated better-than-expected revenue growth in the second quarter and nearly halved its losses compared with the same period last year.
However, this was not enough to convince a skeptical market. SpaceX shares fell more than 5% after the results were published and continued to decline during a conference call with the company’s leadership, including Musk and SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell.
As usual, Musk presented an optimistic outlook for the rocket, communications, and AI company, saying that SpaceX’s internal target of reaching $1 trillion in annual revenue had been moved forward by one year—from 2031 to 2030. According to him, there is a "nonzero probability" of reaching that figure as early as 2029.
He urged the market to be patient regarding the development of Starlink’s business, which provides internet access via satellites.
"I think people really underestimate Starlink," he told analysts. "It is possible that at some point Starlink will provide the majority of the world’s internet, at least in countries where we are allowed to operate, which is the vast majority of countries."
Musk added that this was not some distant scenario, saying that "this will happen in less than 10 years."
Despite this, the shares continued to fall by 6–8% in after-hours trading.
The main issue of greatest concern to investors in large technology companies remains the scale of capital expenditures and the slow return on them, which could trigger a sharp decline in share value.
"The shares are falling because capital expenditures on the artificial intelligence segment were more than twice as high as expected," Melissa Otto, global head of research at Visible Alpha at S&P Global, told Fortune.
SpaceX reported capital expenditures of $18.4 billion in the second quarter, nearly $16 billion of which was allocated to AI computing infrastructure. This significantly exceeded analysts’ expectations of $13.2 billion and was much higher than the $10.1 billion in capital expenditures in the first quarter.
Another factor putting pressure on SpaceX shares will emerge this week: nearly one billion shares owned by company insiders will be eligible for sale for the first time on Thursday. Traditionally, this puts pressure on the share prices of companies after an IPO.
SpaceX shares halved - investors await explanations from Elon Musk04.08.26, 12:00