SpaceX Fell 3.9% on Its Third Lockup Release Since the IPO. I’d Wait to Buy the Stock.

Shares of SpaceX (SPCX -0.85%) fell 3.9% to $147.55 on Wednesday — the same session another batch of the company’s stock became free to trade.

Up to 319 million shares held by employees and early investors came out of lockup on Sept. 9, the third scheduled release since the space and artificial intelligence company’s June initial public offering (IPO). A smaller batch of 59.1 million shares held by affiliates (officers and other controlling holders) followed on Thursday. Both dates came straight from SpaceX’s prospectus.

The timing invites a temptingly overly simplified conclusion: new supply arrived, so the stock fell. Maybe some of it did. But shares had climbed 9% across the three sessions before the release, so Wednesday’s decline left the stock about where it ended the prior week.

But I wouldn’t buy the growth stock here, and Wednesday’s dip isn’t the main reason. Most of SpaceX’s stock is still waiting for its release date.

A mixed record so far

Wednesday was SpaceX’s third unlock, and the first day looked nothing like the two that followed. The first and largest release came on Aug. 6, two days after its first earnings report as a public company, when just over 911 million shares became eligible for sale — more than the roughly 639 million shares the IPO itself sold. Shares rose 6% that day. The second, on Aug. 20, freed another 319 million shares, and the stock fell 4%. Wednesday’s release matched that one in size, and the decline looked similar, too.

The mixed record is a reminder that shares becoming eligible for sale is not the same thing as shares being sold. After all, every line of the lockup schedule says “up to,” and nobody is required to sell on the day they’re allowed to.

Most of SpaceX still can’t trade

The pool that can trade consists of the roughly 639 million shares sold in the IPO and the four batches the lockup has released since early August. That comes to at most about 2.2 billion of SpaceX’s 13.6 billion shares outstanding, or about 17% of the company.

The rest is on a schedule. Releases of up to 328.4 million shares land on Sept. 24, Oct. 9, and Oct. 24. The biggest release left in 2026 (up to 1.3 billion shares, or 28% of the stock under the standard lockup) lands on the second full trading day after SpaceX reports third-quarter results. And nearly 800 million more shares go free on Dec. 8. That last batch would have been just 328.4 million shares had the stock closed at least 30% above its $135 IPO price on five of the 10 trading days into the first earnings report. It never came close.

In short, about 3.1 billion shares are scheduled to become sellable between now and early December — more than everything eligible to trade today.

And even that leaves out the biggest holder. CEO Elon Musk’s stake of more than 6 billion shares, nearly half the company, stays locked until June 2027.

At this price, the supply matters

None of that supply would matter much if the stock were cheap. It isn’t.

SpaceX’s market value of about $2 trillion is more than 60 times the revenue a full year would produce at the second quarter’s pace, about $31 billion.

The business is arguably growing fast enough to deserve a premium. Second-quarter revenue of $7.8 billion nearly doubled year over year.

Space Exploration Technologies

Today’s Change

(-0.85%) $-1.26

Current Price

$146.92

Key Data Points

Market Cap

$2.0TMarket cap calculated using publicly traded shares outstanding only. Does not include unlisted, private, or dual-class non-traded shares. Implied market cap may vary.

Day’s Range

$145.92 – $150.59

52wk Range

$104.83 – $225.64

Volume

32.3M

Avg Vol

111.7M

SpaceX also lost $541 million in the second quarter, though that loss was about half as big as a year earlier. And it spent $28.5 billion on property and equipment in this year’s first half against $12.5 billion of revenue. At a sales multiple above 60, I think the price already counts on years of growth this fast.

Sure, the record so far shows a release day can pass without damage. The largest one did. More float also brings demand with it. SpaceX’s weight in the Nasdaq-100 is expected to rise when the index rebalances on Sept. 21, and JPMorgan estimates the change could force about $15.5 billion of buying from index funds. But the 1.3 billion-share release that follows third-quarter earnings is still ahead, and I’d rather see how the market absorbs that supply before paying more than 60 times revenue.

But would I buy SpaceX stock after this week’s dip? Not yet. Shares just look too expensive here, in my opinion.

If the price pulls back far enough to make shares look more attractive, I’d reconsider.