SpaceX Beat Estimates in Its First Earnings Report — the Stock Fell Anyway, on $18.4 Billion in Spending and a Lock-Up Opening August 6

SpaceX’s first earnings report as a public company was, by the usual yardsticks, a strong one. Revenue for the quarter ended June 30, 2026 came in at $7.8 billion, up 92 percent from a year earlier — ahead of the Wall Street consensus of roughly $6.8 billion to $6.9 billion reported by Fortune and CBS News, a beat of nearly a billion dollars by Fortune’s math. The net loss narrowed to $541 million from about $1 billion a year before. The market’s verdict came after the bell. Shares of SPCX rose about 9 percent during the August 4 regular session to close near $125; once the results were out, they dropped roughly 7 to 9 percent in after-hours trading, and the stock was trading lower again in Wednesday’s premarket on August 5.

The results were not the problem. The problem, in the market coverage that followed, was money going out the door — $18.4 billion of capital spending in a single quarter — and a calendar item arriving August 6, when hundreds of millions of locked-up shares become eligible for sale for the first time.

Key facts

Revenue: $7.8 billion, up 92 percent year over year, ahead of the roughly $6.8-6.9 billion consensus.
Net loss narrowed to $541 million, from about $1 billion a year earlier.
Capital spending: $18.4 billion for the quarter, with $15.8 billion going into AI infrastructure.
Up to 911.5 million Class A shares become eligible for sale starting August 6.

What the first report showed

SpaceX, which has traded on Nasdaq under the ticker SPCX since June 12, 2026, reported $7.8 billion in revenue across three segments — and each of the three is telling a different story.

Connectivity (Starlink): $4.3 billion, up 66 percent. The subscriber base doubled in a year, to 12 million subscribers.
AI (Grok and X): $2.6 billion, up 247 percent, largely from Grok and X subscriptions — and still an operating loss of about $1.3 billion. Explosive growth and heavy losses at once is the profile of a business being built at full speed.
Space (launch): $962 million, up 29 percent — now the smallest of the three segments by revenue, even though it’s the business the company is named for.

Financial media tie the AI segment to SpaceX’s absorption of Elon Musk’s xAI — the company behind the Grok chatbot — in an all-stock merger completed in early February 2026, a deal that valued the combined company at about $1.25 trillion at the time. Musk’s stated goal for the combination: building AI data centers in space. The launch business, meanwhile, kept up its cadence: 38 launches in the quarter, a first suborbital flight of Starship V3 in May, and more than $6 billion in multi-year U.S. government contracts.

Adjusted EBITDA — earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, a rough measure of operating cash generation — was $3.5 billion, up 191 percent. The company ended the quarter with $100 billion in cash and marketable securities and a $47.5 billion contract backlog — work already under contract that has not yet been delivered or turned into revenue.

So does SpaceX make money or lose it? Both numbers are true at once: day-to-day operations now generate billions in cash, but EBITDA deliberately leaves out real costs — interest, taxes, and the accounting charge for equipment wearing out — and once those are counted back in, the quarter still ends in a net loss, though a smaller one than a year ago. The $100 billion is cash on hand, not profit.

Why a beat turned into a sell-off

The figure investors seized on was capital expenditure: $18.4 billion for the quarter, up from $2.8 billion in the same quarter last year, with $15.8 billion of it going into the AI build-out — data centers and compute capacity. Fortune reported that analysts had expected roughly $48.7 billion of capital spending for the full year — SpaceX spent well over a third of that in three months — and that investors flagged the spending pace as their central concern: how long can it run this far ahead of revenue?

There is a second explanation, and it does not contradict the first: the lock-up. Yahoo Finance and Investing.com had both written about the coming release weeks before the report, and concern about the selling pressure it could bring was already part of the stock’s story.

What happens on August 6

When SpaceX went public, insiders and early holders agreed not to sell their shares for a set period — a standard IPO arrangement called a lock-up. Under the prospectus, the first release comes on the second full trading day after the company’s first earnings report. With earnings out August 4, that lands on August 6, 2026. On that day, up to 911.5 million Class A shares become eligible for sale for the first time. For scale: roughly 280 million shares are publicly traded today, by The Motley Fool’s count, so the newly eligible block is several times the size of everything trading now. The reason that matters for the price is plain supply and demand: when far more shares can suddenly be offered for sale than the market is used to absorbing, sellers may have to accept lower prices to find buyers — which is why an approaching unlock can weigh on a stock before a single share changes hands.

Eligible to be sold is not the same as sold. Nobody knows how many holders will actually part with shares. And a second, conditional block of shares is not part of the August 6 release: it would have come free that day only if the stock had closed at least 30 percent above the $135 IPO price — that is, at $175.50 or better — on at least five of the ten trading days ending with the August 4 earnings date. Over that stretch it traded far below the mark, so that block stays under lock-up for now.

For readers wondering about Musk himself: the IPO prospectus locks his shares — up to 6.4 billion of them, roughly seven times the entire block becoming eligible this week — until June 12, 2027, and nothing in the record indicates any announced plan to sell. Other locked shares keep unlocking in stages through the rest of the year.

Timeline: the road to this week

Early February 2026 — SpaceX completes its all-stock merger with xAI, valuing the combined company at about $1.25 trillion.
June 12, 2026 — SpaceX begins trading on Nasdaq under the ticker SPCX.
June 16, 2026 — The stock touches $225.64, its high since the IPO.
August 4, 2026 — SpaceX reports its first quarterly earnings as a public company; shares fall in after-hours trading.
August 5, 2026 — The stock trades lower again in Wednesday’s premarket.
August 6, 2026 — The lock-up opens: up to 911.5 million Class A shares become eligible for sale for the first time.

The wider frame

The June IPO was the largest in history, by Bloomberg’s account: shares priced at $135, and the size of the raise is reported two ways the record does not reconcile — Bloomberg put it at $75 billion, while an account of the June 15 closing, covering 638,888,888 shares in all, puts net proceeds at roughly $85.7 billion. Either way, the listing repriced a company the February merger had valued at about $1.25 trillion only four months earlier. The stock touched $225.64 on June 16 before giving much of that back.

The company said a transcript of the August 4 earnings call would be posted at ir.spacex.com the day after the call. The next scheduled test of investor patience is already on the calendar: the staggered lock-up releases running through the rest of the year, and a second earnings report in the fall.

Buying the real thing — and avoiding the fakes

One practical note to close on. For anyone searching “SpaceX stock” on old advice: the company is no longer private. Since June 12, 2026, anyone with a brokerage account can buy SPCX on Nasdaq like any other listed stock. Two cautions come with that.

Check the ticker. SPCX is SpaceX; SPXC is SPX Technologies, an unrelated company. Tokenized products called “SpaceX PreStocks” that trade on the Solana blockchain are not SpaceX shares either — they are separate crypto instruments with their own mechanics and risks.
No legitimate purchase requires special access. Any offer of “pre-IPO access” or “exclusive eligibility” to SpaceX stock is a red flag — the shares are on a public exchange, and a regulated broker is the only door in.

Frequently asked questions

Why did the stock fall if the results beat estimates?

Investors focused on two things outside the earnings themselves: $18.4 billion in quarterly capital spending, mostly for AI infrastructure, and the August 6 lock-up opening, which was already part of the stock’s story before the report came out.

What exactly happens on August 6?

It’s the first lock-up release since the IPO — the point when insiders and early holders are first allowed to sell shares they’ve held since going public. Under the prospectus, that release lands on the second full trading day after the first earnings report, which falls on August 6, 2026. Up to 911.5 million Class A shares become eligible for sale that day; eligible is not the same as sold.

Does Elon Musk’s stock unlock this week too?

No. Musk’s shares, up to 6.4 billion of them, stay locked under the prospectus until June 12, 2027, and nothing in the record points to any announced plan to sell.