TradingKey - The last-minute cancellation of the Starship V3 Flight 13 test flight dealt another blow to SpaceX's stock price, causing it to plunge again, and the stock price may continue to face downward pressure.
On July 16, Eastern Time, Elon Musk's space exploration technology company, SpaceX ( SPCX) fell over 3% to close at $131.11, officially breaking below its IPO price of $135. In after-hours trading, SpaceX's stock price continued to decline by over 4%, once dropping to $125, representing a cumulative decline of approximately 44% from its peak of $225 recorded shortly after listing.
The catalyst for this wave of decline in SpaceX's stock price was the cancellation of the highly anticipated Starship V3 Flight 13 test flight, which significantly dampened the confidence of short-term capital. On that day, just as Starship's 13th flight entered the final launch countdown at the "T-0 seconds" engine ignition moment, the rocket's automatic flight computer suddenly triggered an automatic abort, forcing an emergency cancellation of the launch sequence.
Regarding the cancellation of this test flight, CEO Elon Musk explained on X that the abort was due to some Raptor engines failing to ignite successfully, adding that "to ensure a smooth flight, we need to remove and replace two of the Raptor engines. The next launch is expected to be postponed to around next Tuesday at the earliest."
During the previous test flight (Flight 12), the spacecraft successfully re-entered the atmosphere, but the Super Heavy booster suffered a "hard landing" when attempting a soft landing in the Gulf of Mexico because multiple engines failed to ignite. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) classified this as a mishap and suspended subsequent launches, eventually concluding its investigation and approving the return-to-flight for Flight 13 on July 13. However, this new anomaly has once again dealt a blow to the already fragile market confidence.
SpaceX's stock price rallied for three consecutive days after listing, but has since continued to decline. In particular, it fell for five consecutive trading days recently, losing two key defense lines: the opening price of $150 on its first trading day and the IPO price of $135. Currently, these two defense lines have flipped from support to strong resistance, and the stock price needs to reclaim and hold steady above $150 to confirm that this round of major drawdown has completely ended.
SpaceX stock price chart, Source: TradingView
Next Tuesday, if Starship Flight 13 successfully replaces its engines and launches successfully, the stock is expected to build a bottom near $135. However, if next week's launch suffers another setback, SpaceX may not even hold the $120 institutional internal bottom-line valuation from its earlier confidential filing, and is highly likely to head toward the $100 psychological milestone.
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