As shares of Elon Musk’s SpaceX continue to dip, short sellers betting against the company are making an absolute fortune.
As Reuters reported last week, short sellers had already made a whopping $8.7 billion in profit — and that was when the company’s stock was trading around $135. Since then, shares have cratered, dipping all the way down to an all-time low of $118 by Wednesday.
As a result, even more short sellers are throwing themselves at the chance to bet against the company, as CNBC reports. According to estimates from financial software company S3 Partners, around 206 million shares are being shorted, just under a third of all publicly tradable shares. That’s up from around 185 million just last week and only 40 million shares one month ago.
“We continue to see short sellers adding exposure ahead of several key upcoming catalysts, including the company’s first earnings report as a public company and subsequent lock-up expirations,” S3 head of research Matthew Unterman told CNBC.
Musk, who has an extensive track record of raging against Tesla short sellers, is clearly letting the issue get under his skin.
“The survival probability of firms who maintain a significant short position in SpaceX over time is very low,” he tweeted.
The almost-trillionaire also rehashed his belief that “SpaceX will be worth more than Earth if we achieve our goals,” stating without evidence that his extremely far-fetched prediction was “obviously true.”
But before it has any chance to take over the entire world, SpaceX has a lot to prove. The company confirmed this week that it will release its first quarterly earnings report on August 4, a major litmus test of where the company’s headed.
Chances are it won’t be pretty. SpaceX’s market capitalization of over $1.6 trillion — making it one of the most valuable companies in the world — has little to no bearing on its current business fundamentals. The company lost almost $5 billion last year. Musk’s xAI, which was folded into SpaceX earlier this year and renamed to SpaceXAI, similarly lost $6.4 billion.
To regain ground lost ground, Musk will have to convince investors of his lofty and untested goals of sending data centers into space and settling on the Moon with the help of SpaceX’s behemoth Starship spacecraft.
Those claims will be put to the test Thursday, when the company has scheduled another test of the mammoth rocket — and regardless of the outcome, we’re likely to see substantial stock movement in its wake.
More on SpaceX: Short Sellers Are Having a Field Day Betting Against SpaceX as Shares Continue to Slip
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