SpaceX NASDAQ:SPCX, Elon Musk's rocket, satellite and artificial intelligence company, has moved close to its $135 initial public offering price after three consecutive sessions of losses raised fresh questions about near-term investor confidence. The shares declined 2.2% on Tuesday to close at $136.08, leaving them only $1 above the price paid by IPO investors last month. SpaceX has now fallen about one-third from its post-listing peak, erasing nearly $850 billion in market value. Investors often monitor the IPO price as an important psychological level because a decline below it shortly after a listing may put early shareholders in the red and weaken the carefully built enthusiasm surrounding a new issue.
The latest decline comes despite a strongly positive response from Wall Street following SpaceX's addition to the Nasdaq-100 through fast-entry rules. More than a dozen banks, including Morgan Stanley, a global financial services firm, JPMorgan Chase, a major U.S. banking group, and Goldman Sachs, a global investment bank, began coverage with buy-equivalent ratings. More than 80% of analysts following SpaceX recommend buying the shares, while their average price target of $236.25 suggests potential upside of more than 70% from Tuesday's closing level. However, some investors remain cautious because SpaceX trades at a forward estimated price-to-sales ratio above 30 times, among the highest in the Nasdaq-100 and only modestly below Palantir Technologies, a company referenced in the source as a valuation comparison. The company also faces an extended lock-up structure that is expected to release insider shares into the market periodically over the coming months, which could increase available supply.
The weakness in SpaceX also reflects the volatility affecting several of the largest U.S. listings this year. Bloomberg data show that six of the 10 biggest offerings are trading below their first-day closing levels, while the weighted-average return for 2026 U.S. IPOs excluding blank-check companies had fallen to 5.3% through July 13. A Truist Wealth analysis of 30 major technology IPOs over the previous 15 years found that those stocks experienced an average maximum decline of 55% during their first year of trading, suggesting that sharp early pullbacks are not unusual for newly public technology companies. Investors are also watching American depositary shares of SK Hynix (HXSCL), a South Korean chipmaker, after SpaceX and SK Hynix completed record-setting listings less than one month apart. A decline below SpaceX's IPO price may attract investors who missed the original offering, although Ken Mahoney of Mahoney Asset Management said the shares may not yet have reached their low, while Talley Leger of the Wealth Consulting Group indicated that a deeper pullback could make the stock more attractive.