SpaceX Shares Close Thursday at $160.57, Above $135 IPO Price and Far Above August Low

Nearly four months after the biggest IPO in history, SpaceX stock has recovered much of the ground it lost in a two-month slide.

Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (NASDAQ: SPCX) closed Thursday, Oct. 8, at $160.57, down 4.2% on the day. That is above the $135 per share the company set in its S-1 filing, and well above the Aug. 5 low of $104.83.

Pre-market trading on Friday, Oct. 9, put the stock at $166.69, up 3.81% from Thursday's close. That is a pre-market price, not an opening price.

From $225 to $104 and back

SpaceX went public June 12 at a valuation of $1.77 trillion. Shares opened at $150, hit $176.52 intraday and finished the first session at $160.95.

Then came the run. The stock soared to $225.64 within days of listing. By Aug. 5 it had fallen to $104.83, a drop of $120.81 from the peak.

Since that low, shares have gained 48% in three months, according to Bloomberg. They have traded above $160 all week, a level they last closed at on July 6.

The path has not been smooth. SpaceX ended September at $150.86, climbed to $171.92 by Oct. 6, then fell to $160.57 at Thursday's close. Finbold put the company's value at over $2.1 trillion as of Oct. 9, and the Motley Fool's data page lists a market cap of $2.2 trillion.

What an IPO buyer has today

The IPO price and the price most people paid are different numbers. The company priced at $135, but most retail investors could not get shares at that level. The stock opened at $150.

At the $135 IPO price, $1,000 grew to $1,234.74 at the Friday pre-market level of $166.69, according to Finbold. At the $150 open, the same $1,000 is worth $1,111.27. At the first-day close of $160.95, it is worth $1,035.67.

The Motley Fool calculated that a $5,000 stake bought at the $150 open would have bought approximately 33 shares. At around $165, as of Oct. 5, that was worth roughly $5,500.

Anyone who bought near the $225 peak is still deep underwater. Anyone who sold at the low locked in a large loss. The stock price is a measure of the shares, not of any particular holder's outcome.

The spectrum purchase

Bloomberg reported that shares extended their gains Friday after SpaceX acquired a crucial batch of spectrum that will allow it to offer "complete phone coverage in America." SpaceX's own filing or statement on the deal is the document to watch.

The market backdrop is also supportive. The Nasdaq composite hit a record near 27,300 in September and the S&P 500 topped 7,800 for the first time. Both indexes gained in the third quarter despite the war in Iran, 3.4% annual PCE inflation and a federal funds rate now at 3.75% to 4%.

Ken Mahoney, president and CEO of Mahoney Asset Management, said major names have carried the market, which is typical in bull runs. "The indexes can hide what's happening underneath," he said.

Bulls and bears

The average Wall Street price target for SPCX is $216.21, per Finbold.

Elon Musk is more bullish still. In a post on X, he said he sees "a path to SpaceX being worth orders of magnitude more than the current Earth economy." World GDP is estimated at roughly $126 trillion. Finbold calculated that a value in the tens of quadrillions would put the share price near $1 million, assuming no splits.

Morningstar disagrees sharply. The firm's base case is a fall to $70 per share. The gap between SpaceX's valuation and its revenue remains vast, according to Finbold's analysis of the bearish view.

Those two numbers, $216.21 and $70, frame the dispute. One side prices in rockets, satellites and phone service at enormous scale. The other points to a company valued above $2 trillion against revenue that falls far short of that.

The immediate test is whether the pre-market gain holds. Shares have traded above $160 all week, and Thursday's 4.2% drop pulled the stock back from Tuesday's $171.92 high. Whether $160 becomes support or just another stop on the way back down is the question for the sessions ahead.