SpaceX released its second-quarter earnings report after the closing bell on Aug. 4, facing Wall Street for the first time since its June debut.
The company said in a regulatory filing that revenue totaled $7.8 billion in the three months ended June 30, up 92 percent from the same period a year ago. This came in above the consensus estimate of almost $7 billion.
SpaceX also reported a loss per share of 9 cents, far below the market forecasts of 26 cents.
SpaceX Chief Operating Officer Bret Johnsen, said in the filing, “2026 has been a momentous year so far, and the second quarter demonstrated the true power of SpaceX.”
“Revenue growth accelerated across all our business segments and we delivered strong operating leverage, with significant margin expansion led by our new AI compute agreements,” he said.
It has been a bumpy road for SpaceX since its initial public offering, also known as an IPO. After its market capitalization topped $2 trillion, the stock has lost about $500 billion in market value, with shares falling about 40 percent to below its IPO price after peaking above $200.
One of the big announcements from the earnings call is that SpaceX intends to build its AI data centers entirely around Nvidia chips. CEO Elon Musk projected that the company will have more than 2 gigawatts of computing power by late 2026, scaling up to nearly 10 gigawatts by the end of next year.
Despite the numbers, SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell previously indicated that quarterly earnings will not be the company’s chief focus.
“I do not want to focus on quarterly earnings,” Shotwell told CNBC on June 12. “I’m not saying we’re not going to do right by our investors, but what folks who invest in SpaceX need to know is that what we’re doing is very futuristic.”’
Its IPO prospectus revealed SpaceX’s ambitious plans, including orbital data centers and a permanent human colony on Mars with up to one million inhabitants.
For now, most of its revenue comes from its connectivity segment, according to the latest filing, which includes its Starlink satellite internet service. In the last quarter, artificial intelligence ($2.6 billion), connectivity ($4.3 billion), and space ($962 million) were the three main earners.
Musk anticipates that SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service will expand upon its lead within the decade.
“It’s not out of the question that, at some point, Starlink will deliver a majority of the world’s internet, at least in countries where we are allowed to operate, which is the vast majority of countries,” Musk said on the call.
It finished the quarter with $100 billion in cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities, as well as $47.5 billion in backlog.
“This financial strength gives us substantial capacity to invest in Starship, Starlink Broadband, and Mobile satellites, and our AI platform while maintaining a disciplined long-term capital allocation framework,” Johnsen said.
Capital expenditures for the quarter came in slightly below expectations, totaling $18.37 billion compared to the forecast of $18.58 billion.
Johnsen told analysts on the earnings call that capital deployment has been so efficient that SpaceX’s returns are “moving so quickly.”
“All CapEx is not the same,” Johnsen said. “Specifically on the AI compute side, we’re able to deploy capital in such a way that we’re getting less than a one-year payback.”
Capex has been under the spotlight this year as scores of AI hyperscalers have raised their spending estimates. In total, Big Tech’s capex could reach $1 trillion this year.
Wall Street analysts are optimistic. They maintain a “Moderate Buy” consensus rating, with a 12-month upside of nearly 93 percent.
The stock also gained momentum heading into the highly anticipated inaugural earnings report. Shares of SpaceX had surged about 9 percent by the end of the Aug. 4 session, their best performance since June 15.
The SpaceX logo and an Elon Musk photo are seen in this illustration taken Dec. 19, 2022. Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo/Reuters
A growing chorus of the financial markets, however, has been betting against SpaceX. The short float—the percentage of a company’s public shares that have been sold short—is around 25 percent.
“Investors will also be watching whether additional performance-based lock-up provisions are triggered, making August not only a test of SpaceX’s fundamentals, but also of the market’s appetite to absorb a potentially significant increase in supply,” Jay Woods, chief market strategist at Freedom Capital Markets, said in an emailed note to The Epoch Times.
More than 91 million shares held by employees and early investors will be unlocked and eligible for sale on Aug. 6.
Although it beat expectations, SpaceX shares slumped more than 8 percent in after-hours trading.
The broader financial markets registered supersized gains, led by the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index, which soared 671 points, or 2.59 percent, to almost 26,600. The blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average spiked 907 points, or 1.7 percent, to nearly 54,100. The broad-market S&P 500 climbed 136 points, or 1.8 percent, to a record 7,736.
