Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest kept buying, with ARKK purchasing 44,196 SpaceX shares worth about $6.6 million at Tuesday’s close.
- SPCX closed at $149.47 on Tuesday, still above its $135 IPO price but below its June 12 opening level and more than 25% under its June 16 high.
- Nasdaq-100 inclusion failed to spark a rally, despite expectations that index-tracking funds with about $800 billion in assets would buy shares.
- Wall Street remains bullish, with the average analyst target near $236, while Deutsche Bank and Cantor Fitzgerald initiated with Buy-equivalent ratings.
SpaceX shares rose 0.2% overnight heading into Wednesday after its first Nasdaq-100 session disappointed investors, even as Cathie Wood’s ARK Investment Management kept buying and Starlink doubled prices on key aviation plans.
SPCX stock fell 7% on Tuesday, closing at $149.47. The stock remains above its $135 IPO price, but it has now fallen below the $150 level where it began trading on June 12 and sits more than 25% below its June 16 closing high of $201.80.
The decline in SpaceX’s share price came despite expectations that Nasdaq-100 inclusion would create forced buying from mutual funds and ETFs tracking the index. Funds with $800 billion in assets had been expected to buy SpaceX shares to mirror the benchmark, but some of that demand may already have been priced in after the stock rose nearly 6% last week, The Wall Street Journal noted.
Cathie Wood’s ARK Buys More SpaceX
ARK Invest’s latest trade notification showed Cathie Wood is still leaning into the SpaceX trade. The ARK Innovation ETF (ARKK) bought 44,196 shares of SPCX on Tuesday, equal to 0.0969% of the ETF. Based on Tuesday’s closing price, the purchase was worth about $6.6 million.
ARKK also bought X-Energy, Kratos Defense and Security Solutions, CoreWeave and Recursion Pharmaceuticals, while selling Alibaba, Roku, Twist Bioscience, Natera, AMD and Illumina. ARKQ bought X-Energy and Kratos in the same trade notification.
The purchase extends ARK’s aggressive move into SpaceX. By the end of June 12, the day SpaceX went public, ARK funds held about 3.29 million shares. ARKK was the largest holder, while the ARK Space Exploration & Innovation ETF (ARKX) had the heaviest exposure, with SpaceX making up 6.8% of the fund. In ARK’s view, SpaceX is not merely a rocket maker, but a satellite-internet, defense and orbital-infrastructure company with long-term AI and connectivity optionality.
Wall Street Still Sees SPCX Upside
More than a dozen brokerages started coverage on Tuesday after the post-IPO quiet period ended, with the average price target around $236, still implying a 58% upside from Tuesday’s close. Most recently, Deutsche Bank began coverage with a ‘Buy’ rating and $255 target, citing SpaceX’s reusable rockets, Starlink network and potential advantage in deploying AI infrastructure on the ground and eventually in orbit.
Cantor Fitzgerald initiated with an ‘Overweight’ rating and $246 target, calling SpaceX a “planetary infrastructure company” spanning launch, satellite connectivity, AI compute and platform distribution.
SpaceX’s Starlink Doubles Aviation Prices
Separately, Starlink is raising prices sharply for Business Aviation customers. The Aviation Regional 25GB plan is rising to $4,000 per month from $2,000, with 25GB included and additional data priced at $250 per GB. Aviation Global Unlimited is rising to $20,000 per month from $10,000.
Starlink is also introducing Aviation Regional Unlimited at $12,500 per month. The global plan offers unlimited worldwide coverage and speeds of up to 1 Gbps, though Starlink says the Aviation Performance Antenna is required to reach that speed. The new plans took effect immediately for new customers on Tuesday. Existing customers will move to the updated pricing on their next billing cycle after August 7. General Aviation pricing is not changing.
How Do Retail Traders Feel About SPCX?
On Stocktwits, retail sentiment for SPCX was ‘bearish’ amid ‘extremely low’ message volume.
One user said, “$SPCX Dam good thing for the forced buying or this ship would be in the 130s.”
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Another user said, “The recent price action is to shake out retails and for institutions to get in at lower price. Now the dust has settled (I.e, institutions/funds have got their shares cheap), they start to pump this stock, just look at those analysts coverages and price targets. I expect the price to go up till the first earnings report.”
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