SpaceX’s first earnings report is due after the closing bell on 4 August, arriving at a fraught moment for a stock that has shed 15% from its $135 IPO price and now faces a wave of insider selling that analysts say could weigh on shares through the end of the year.
Short Sellers Load Up as Lockup Clock Ticks
Short interest in SpaceX has surged since the company went public on 12 June 2026 with only roughly 4 to 5% of its shares making up the public float, according to Pure Power Picks. The public float stood below 280.1 million shares before the August 6 lockup expiration, according to Yahoo Finance.
SpaceX filed its registration statement, Amendment No. 2 on Form S-1, with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on 3 June 2026, setting out the lockup terms that are now concentrating investors’ attention.
Data from S3 Partners show short interest grew from 23.3 million shares at the first print on 16 June to 219.3 million shares on 29 July, reaching 34% of float. S3 placed its short interest figure at $24.6 billion as of 31 July 2026; Business Insider cited an updated figure of $26 billion. Using S3’s own published number, short sellers have booked paper profits of over $8 billion since the IPO, as SpaceX’s market cap collapsed by more than $1 trillion from its June peak.
S3 managing director Matthew Unterman told Business Insider that around 35% of the company’s float is now sold short. At that level, SpaceX’s short interest surpasses Tesla’s, which stood at $21 billion as of 31 July 2026, per S3.
The stock’s slide has been steep. According to Forbes, shares had fallen approximately 43% from their peak before the August 6 expiry and were trading at an all-time low of $105 at the open that day.
What to Watch in SpaceX’s First Earnings Report
Wall Street is not expecting a surprise profit. The consensus estimate for Q2 revenue sits at $6.81 billion, with Starlink, the satellite internet division, the focal point for growth-oriented investors. SpaceX reported a net $4.9 billion loss in 2025, according to Business Insider, citing Fundstrat strategist Hardika Singh.
Singh wrote that if Tesla’s earnings calls are a guide, ‘Chief Executive Elon Musk will likely boast about his grandiose ideas and make aggressive projections.’ She added that if Musk skips that approach ‘because of the recent bloodbath in tech stocks, then that would be a further hit to sentiment.’ Musk is expected to avoid giving specific profitability guidance, Singh noted.
Jay Wood, chief markets strategist at Freedom Capital Markets, said the most pressing question for investors will be capital expenditure. ‘In particular, look for guidance on spending for Starship, Starlink, AI infrastructure and other long-term initiatives,’ Wood said. ‘It’s known that SpaceX will keep investing, the real question is whether management can convince investors those investments will generate meaningful returns without sacrificing the path to profitability and free cash flow.’
Wood also said investors hoping to hear Musk address a potential SpaceX and Tesla merger will likely be disappointed.
Deutsche Bank analyst Edison Yu rates SpaceX a ‘Buy’ with a $255 price target. In a note, Yu wrote: ‘We are optimistic, following the lock-ups coming off, that the stock can stabilize at some level. Moreover, announcing a large government/sovereign AI deal would be viewed positively for the stock.’ Morgan Stanley analysts, cited by TradingKey, view SpaceX’s $1.4 trillion valuation as an entry opportunity.
Bernstein analysts described the lockup schedule as ‘unusually complex,’ with shares unlocking at nine distinct points rather than in a single block 180 days after the IPO. ‘We do not attempt to predict how shares will move as expirations come up in succession into December. But, we have found many investors unwilling to buy SpaceX shares in the interim, based on fundamentals, given the lockup overhang that will exist at least into December,’ the Bernstein team wrote.
The structure makes the supply overhang prolonged. By 8 December 2026, as much as 40% of the company could be potentially tradeable, while the remaining 60%, including Musk’s stake, is expected to stay restricted until mid-2027, according to Forbes. A provision would have allowed an additional 10% of shares to be sold early if the stock traded at least 30% above the $135 IPO price during five of 10 consecutive trading days before the first earnings release; that threshold was not met, so approximately 455.8 million bonus shares rolled into the 8 December expiry, per Yahoo Finance.
After the August 6 expiry, total shares available for trade rose to approximately 1.55 billion, up from approximately 639 million prior, according to CNBC citing S3 Partners data. Another 319 million shares could unlock on 20 August, followed by roughly 700 million in September and close to that number in October, per the prospectus. The earnings call with analysts begins around 4:30pm ET; the next scheduled lockup date will tell investors whether the stock can absorb the supply or whether December’s larger expiry becomes the harder test.