SpaceX stock dropped below its IPO price of $135 on Wednesday, a decline that has emboldened a small but vocal group of sceptics who argued from the outset that the company’s debut valuation was impossible to justify.
The fall marks a 40% retreat from a peak of around $225, reached in the weeks after the company began trading on the Nasdaq on 12 June 2026. The reversal has been swift: according to Yahoo Finance, shares closed their first trading day at around $161, up roughly 19% from the offer price, and surged more than 40% across the first two sessions before a single day’s 16% drop broke the momentum.
The IPO itself was a record-setter. Nearly $86 billion was raised after underwriters exercised the greenshoe allotment, surpassing Saudi Aramco’s 2019 offering, according to Yahoo Finance. SpaceX sold roughly 556.6 million shares, according to IPO Club.
Why SpaceX Stock Below IPO Price Emboldens the Bears
At the offer price, SpaceX carried a market capitalisation of $1.77 trillion, according to CNBC. That valuation implied roughly 70 times SpaceX’s estimated 2026 sales and approximately 265 times its expected 2025 EBITDA, according to CMElite Group. For comparison, Palantir traded at around 225 times its 2025 EBITDA at the time of SpaceX’s IPO pricing.
Those numbers sit uncomfortably alongside the company’s recent financial performance. SpaceX posted a $4.9 billion net loss in 2025 and lost a further $4.28 billion in the first quarter of 2026, according to Yahoo Finance.
CFRA analyst Keith Snyder issued a sell rating immediately after the IPO and has not moved. His 12-month price target of $115 per share implies a total company value of $1.5 trillion, or 20.2 times CFRA’s 2027 sales estimate, which CFRA says is in line with Anthropic’s valuation following its latest funding round, according to Yahoo Finance. Snyder’s $115 target is itself 15% below the $135 offer price.
CNBC reported that Snyder’s sell thesis centres on SpaceX’s long-term strategy being ‘heavily dependent on Starship,’ with the analyst writing that ‘delays or technical setbacks in Starship could ripple across nearly every major growth initiative,’ including satellite-to-mobile operations.
‘I am still negative on the valuation at these levels and haven’t seen anything that would change the story for me,’ Snyder told Business Insider. The only thing he says would change his mind is actual growth.
Wall Street’s Bullish Chorus and the Underwriter Question
Snyder is an outlier. When SpaceX joined the Nasdaq 100, a wave of banks rushed out bullish initiations: Wolfe Research started coverage at Outperform, New Street Research gave the stock a $165 target, and Oppenheimer began at Outperform with a $190 target, according to Yahoo Finance. A Nasdaq rule change that shortened the waiting period for newly listed companies made that index inclusion possible faster than usual, funnelling index-fund buying into the stock as funds rebalanced, Yahoo Finance reported.
Ed Elson, a day trader and co-host of Scott Galloway’s Prof G Markets podcast, said in June that he viewed SpaceX as highly overvalued and predicted the stock would be cut in half within a year. On 14 July, he updated his view, pointing to the concentration of bullish calls from banks that also underwrote the IPO. In his assessment, those banks retain a financial incentive to describe the stock favourably even after the end of the legal quiet period for underwriters.
‘Anyone who bought post-IPO is now underwater,’ Elson said. ‘This is in line with the trend: Research shows IPOs recommended by analysts at underwriting banks underperform and, on average, lose value.’
George Noble, a former Fidelity Overseas Fund manager and hedge fund founder, was more direct. ‘Expect the price to completely crash,’ he told Business Insider. ‘I think it could be half over the course of the year.’ Noble’s price target is $30, a level that would represent a 78% decline from Wednesday’s price. He has previously described Tesla as the biggest bubble in stock market history.
Jay Ritter, an economist known as ‘Mr. IPO’ for his research on capital markets, told Business Insider he had considered shorting SpaceX before its listing. He said he was not surprised by the post-IPO slide, though he stopped short of confirming he has placed a bet against the stock.
The SpaceX S-1 filed with the SEC gives investors the company’s own account of its balance sheet and debt structure. Whether the bears or the bulls are proved right may hinge on when, and whether, Starship begins generating the revenue the bullish models require.