Analyst: Unrealistic expectations at SpaceX
August 6, 2026
Analysts at research firm Moffett Nathanson (MN), in a note following on from SpaceX’s Q2 earnings release on August 4th, argued that despite describing the company’s IPO some two months ago as containing the “crown jewel” in the form of its Falcon 9 rockets, there remain some major questions that were not answered by the Q2 results.
“In the weeks since [the IPO], the shares have pulled back sharply. One might reasonably argue that the pullback suggests a dampening of those expectations. But perhaps there is a bigger question with which the market is grappling,” said MN.
“In our coverage initiation report, we called the Space (launch) segment the ‘crown jewel’ of SpaceX, the enabler that makes possible all the optionality in all its other businesses. We suspect that the pre-IPO enthusiasm for SpaceX rested on the same framing. The questions that swirl today, however, are less about space and more about terrestrial concerns. Will Starlink Mobile mean costly spectrum purchases and a terrestrial buildout to compete in suburbia and D2D wireless? Is SpaceX’s AI business an LLM competitor to Anthropic and OpenAI, or a (terrestrial) neocloud competitor? Will a merger with Tesla mean SpaceX is also an auto (and eventually an autonomous robot) manufacturer? And how will the company generate or raise enough cash to offset the heavy investment cycles required to achieve its ambitions?” asked MN.
“None of these long-term questions were, or indeed could have been, definitively answered on the earnings call tonight,” stated MN. “Instead, SpaceX reported a strong quarter buoyed by the high-margin terrestrial IaaS deals signed by its AI segment, no doubt giving existing investors some welcome reprieve after the stock shed about a trillion dollars in market capitalization from its peak post-IPO price. But the operating results and bullish forward commentary were paired with capex well ahead of consensus, with more spending to come. Until we have more clarity on the big questions – what is SpaceX? – and until expectations reset to what SpaceX’s category-of-one technology can more realistically achieve, we remain on the sidelines.”
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