SpaceX has been on a slide since hitting a $2 trillion valuation milestone at its June IPO, shedding close to $500 billion in market cap from its peak. Tuesday was its first-ever earnings report as a publicly listed company and a fresh chance for CEO Elon Musk to hype the stock and turn that frown upside down.
The company posted better-than-expected revenue growth in the second quarter and narrowed its losses to nearly half the level of a year ago.
But it wasn’t enough to win over a skeptical market. Shares of SpaceX slid more than 5% after the results were released and continued to slip during the conference call with top executives including Musk and President Gwynne Shotwell. As is his custom, Musk offered a rose-colored outlook for the rocket-and-connectivity AI giant, proclaiming that SpaceX’s internal target for hitting $1 trillion in annual revenue had moved forward a full year since the IPO from 2031 to 2030, with a “a non-zero chance” it hits the mark in 2029. He asked the market for patience with with the growth of its Starlink business, which beams internet connectivity to Earth from satellites.
“I think people are really underestimating Starlink,” he told analysts. “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’re allowed to operate, which is the vast majority of countries.”
