SpaceX Fizzles to Close $1 Above IPO Price Weeks After Debut
Carmen Reinicke and Bailey Lipschultz
Updated Wed, July 15, 2026 at 10:19 AM GMT+5:30
3 min read
(Bloomberg) — Three days of losses have brought SpaceX (SPCX) shares to the brink of falling below their initial public offering price, a key level that traders and investors watch to assess the health of new issues
Shares fell 2.2% Tuesday to close at $136.08 each, just $1 above the $135 price tag buyers paid last month in the biggest first-time share sale ever. Elon Musk’s rocket, satellite and artificial intelligence company has plunged one-third from its post-listing peak, erasing nearly $850 billion in value
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A company’s shares falling below the IPO price within days or weeks of its first trading day punctures the narrative that’s been carefully choreographed by the company and its bankers to hype up expectations. Putting shareholders in the red at such an early stage is a blow to confidence that some newly-listed firms don’t recover from
Skeptics note that the stock trades at a forward estimated price-to-sales ratio of more than 30 times, among the highest in the Nasdaq-100 Index and modestly lagging that of Palantir Technologies Inc. SpaceX is also facing an extended lock-up that will see insiders periodically releasing shares into the market over the coming months
“We still don’t think SpaceX has found its low,” chief executive officer of Mahoney Asset Management. “There will be continuous supply coming on in the coming months, and you would have to monitor how much demand would be there as you move down the quality spectrum.”
Index Addition
SpaceX’s slip near the IPO price comes just a week after the company was added to the Nasdaq 100 through fast-entry rules, and after analysts gave the company — whose unconventional pitch included a base on the moon and eventually a colony on Mars — a resoundingly bullish reception
More than a dozen bankers including Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. started coverage with buy-equivalent ratings, according to data compiled by Bloomberg
Over 80% of Wall Street analysts covering SpaceX say to buy shares and see major upside ahead. The average price target of $236.25 is more than 70% above Tuesday’s close
It’s normal for newly-public stocks to experience volatility. A Truist Wealth analysis of 30 major technology IPOs over the past 15 years found that they averaged a maximum decline of 55% in the first year of trading
