SpaceX, Elon Musk’s space-transport and satellite business, is on track to complete the largest IPO in history on Friday, June 12, under the Nasdaq ticker SPCX.
- Ferragu’s bullish call rests on a detailed sum-of-the-parts analysis that projects explosive growth across SpaceX’s core businesses.
- The analyst noted that if SpaceX’s total addressable market hits the high end of his estimates, the stock could be worth as much as $330 per share.
- Separately, veteran short seller Jim Chanos slammed SpaceX’s upcoming IPO valuation as “fueled by hopes and dreams” rather than financial fundamentals.
New Street Research analyst Pierre Ferragu initiated coverage of SpaceX on Wednesday with a $165 price target and an “Overweight” rating, just days before the rocket company’s historic initial public offering. The target implies 22% upside from the $135-per-share IPO price set earlier this month and values the post-Cursor-acquisition equity at roughly $2.3 trillion.
SpaceX, Elon Musk’s space-transport and satellite business, is on track to complete the largest IPO in history on Friday, June 12, under the Nasdaq ticker SPCX. The company priced the offering at a fixed $135 per share, targeting a $1.77 trillion valuation and a record $75 billion cash raise.
The IPO valuation already bakes in SpaceX’s planned $60 billion acquisition of AI coding startup Cursor, which the company has the right to complete later this year. The debut comes after years of sky-high private valuations and intense investor demand; the deal is reported to be multiple times oversubscribed.
Wall Street’s Bull Case
Ferragu’s bullish call rests on a detailed sum-of-the-parts analysis that projects explosive growth across SpaceX’s core businesses. The firm forecasts the company will generate $195 billion in revenue and $65 billion in EBIT by 2030. It assigns $400 billion to the direct-to-home Starlink satellite-internet business, $250 billion to direct-to-cell connectivity, and $100 billion to third-party launch services. The standout figure is a $575 billion standalone valuation for xAI — a 60% premium over comparable AI pure-plays such as OpenAI and Anthropic — because SpaceX owns the “physical stack” of rockets, satellites and orbital infrastructure. Leading in orbital data centers further boosts xAI’s worth, Ferragu wrote.
The analyst noted that if SpaceX’s total addressable market hits the high end of his estimates, the stock could be worth as much as $330 per share.
Skeptics Push Back
However, not all are fans of the upcoming billion-dollar IPO. Investor Steve Eisman said Monday he is “not a fan” of the IPO, warning that the rocket company’s pivot into artificial intelligence has transformed it into an extraordinarily capital-intensive business with few competitive advantages.
In fiscal year 2023, capex stood at just 42% of revenue when SpaceX was primarily focused on its Starlink satellite internet business. By the first quarter of this year, that figure had ballooned to 215% of revenue as the company ramped up spending on AI infrastructure.
“It’s not even space that’s so hard. It’s the AI,” Eisman said. SpaceX merged with Musk’s AI startup and Grok parent xAI earlier this year.
Veteran short seller Jim Chanos also slammed SpaceX’s upcoming IPO valuation as “fueled by hopes and dreams” rather than financial fundamentals, saying that investor excitement over Elon Musk and artificial intelligence is driving the blockbuster $135-per-share pricing far beyond what the business can realistically justify, as reported by Bloomberg.
“This is really a hopes-and-dreams IPO,” Chanos said.
SpaceX And AI Hopes
SpaceX has long been one of the most valuable private companies in the world, fueled by Starlink’s rapid subscriber growth and reusable Starship technology. Until now, it has remained private, allowing Musk to fund ambitious projects without quarterly Wall Street pressure. Going public will give employees and early investors liquidity while exposing the company to public-market scrutiny over execution risks, regulatory hurdles, and heavy capital spending.
Elon Musk is aggressively pushing to fuse SpaceX’s orbital infrastructure with cutting-edge artificial intelligence, creating what he calls the ultimate “physical stack” for AI. He has proposed developing orbital data centers powered by Starlink satellites and future Starship missions, reiterating that the next frontier of AI will not be on Earth, but in space.
On Stocktwits, retail sentiment around SPACZZX was ‘extremely bullish’ at the time of writing.
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