SpaceX is nearly trading back at its initial-public-offering price as recent selling has taken a toll - but experts say not to write off the company just yet.
SpaceX $(SPCX)$ went public at $135 a share a month ago after a record-breaking IPO that valued the company at more than $1.7 trillion. It raised $85.7 billion from investors, making it by far the largest IPO of all time.
SpaceX's offering, along with SK Hynix's U.S. listing last week, has cemented 2026 as the "Year of the Mega IPO," according to Renaissance Capital. But SpaceX has lost some of the momentum that sent its stock as high as $225.64 a share on June 16 as it debuted on the U.S. options market.
On Monday, SpaceX shares hit an intraday low of $136.78, 39.4% off their intraday peak, before closing at $139.14, down 4.2% on the day. The company has lost $831 billion in value since it reached a $2.67 trillion market capitalization on June 16, according to Dow Jones Market Data.
With the stock's selloff, SpaceX is now the seventh-most valuable U.S. company, falling behind Broadcom $(AVGO)$. SpaceX had been the sixth-largest company in the U.S. every trading day except for June 16, when it briefly surpassed Amazon.com in market cap, according to Dow Jones Market Data.
"SpaceX sitting on its IPO price is far from a crisis," Cerity Partners' Michael Ashley Schulman told MarketWatch over email - calling it "a signal that the narrative premium embedded in the offering may have nowhere to go in the short term."
Schulman added that "we have seen this movie before with other high-profile listings" that left little room for the stock to go up.
Cerebras Systems (CBRS), another major recent public offering, briefly traded below its own IPO price last month. Cerebras's stock was trading at around $204 a share as of Monday afternoon - well below its all-time high of $386.34 a share, but above its IPO price of $185.
SpaceX's valuation has come under a lot of fire, with critics saying that its business fundamentals don't justify it. The company recorded $18.6 billion of revenue in 2025 against a net loss of roughly $4.9 billion. In comparison, Broadcom reported revenue of $63.9 billion and net income of $23.1 billion for its latest full fiscal year.
What SpaceX's stock has traded on, experts say, are the grand plans outlined by the company and CEO Elon Musk. Those include colonizing Mars, putting more than 1 million satellites in orbit and putting mass drivers on the moon. SpaceX envisions a total addressable market of about $28.5 trillion.
Wall Street has helped drive the hype. Last week, Deutsche Bank's Edison Yu said SpaceX represents the "apex of civilizational ambition" as he initiated coverage with a $255-a-share price target. Raymond James's bull case, meanwhile, has SpaceX hitting $1,000 a share.
"As time passes, investors will need to value the stock based on its multitude of businesses instead of the initial IPO hype," Mike Dickson, head of research at Horizon Investments, said in emailed comments.
The stock's recent decline comes just a week after SpaceX was added to the Nasdaq-100 NDX, pushing passive investors in the tech-heavy index to buy the stock. SpaceX had earlier been added to some other indexes, with the S&P 500 SPX a notable exception. That, combined with its low float - or supply of existing shares - has contributed to the volatility.
Giuseppe Sette, co-founder of the investment-analysis company Reflexivity, said that the stock's weakness "does not mean it's the end of the run" for SpaceX. He added that "Elon bulls" will buy the dip in a bet on shares rebounding.
The nearest expected catalyst for SpaceX could come as soon as Thursday, when it's expected to test its Starship rocket for the 13th time. Starship is central to how Wall Street views SpaceX, and any setbacks could easily be a blow to the company's plans.
"Starship is critical to SpaceX's Starlink and AI roadmap, both of which require payload mass and volume that Falcon 9 cannot efficiently support," Yu wrote in a note.
The Federal Aviation Administration on Monday cleared SpaceX for that test. It also closed a mishap investigation into the company's prior launch, which ended in a fiery explosion. The FAA said SpaceX identified four actions to fix issues that likely led to the loss of its Super Heavy booster.
SpaceX on Thursday plans to send 20 V3 Starlink satellites aboard Starship for the first time. Those satellites will attempt to connect with SpaceX's Starlink constellation before expiring during re-entry. It's a step up from the previous Starship test, which included deploying 20 Starlink simulators and two modified satellites.