Elon Musk’s SpaceX went stratospheric following its June 12 IPO, soaring from an opening price of $150 to an all-time high of just over $225, inflating its market cap to just shy of $3 trillion.
But in the days that followed, many investors started getting cold feet, wiping out hundreds of billions of dollars in value as the shares slid, slowly at first, before accelerating their return to the ground. On Monday alone, shares plummeted by almost 17 percent, its worst single-day performance to date.
By Tuesday morning, SpaceX’s 11-day maiden voyage into orbit was symbolically bookmarked by shares plunging below the company’s opening price, reaching an all-time low of a hair over $147. In other words, SpaceX had officially wiped out any gains it has made since going public. (Shares later rebounded to the mid-$150s, a trough that would have been unthinkable just a few days ago.)
The volatility highlights how untethered Musk’s AI-in-space pitch is from reality, given the company’s lagging business fundamentals, a major price-to-earnings gap strongly reminiscent of his EV maker Tesla. The company has been burning through billions of dollars of cash and yet is looking to raise tens of billions more to realize its entirely unproven orbital data center ambitions on the backs of its investors.
SpaceX’s latest highly dip was accompanied by a global tech sell-off over festering fears of an AI bubble. AMD slid almost five percent by mid-morning on Tuesday, while AI chipmaker Nvidia crashed by over 2.6 percent.
Analysts predict some of SpaceX’s volatility may die out once more shares are unlocked in the coming months. But given its performance over the last week and change, chances are high that investors are in for a wild ride as they attempt to gauge remaining enthusiasm for Musk’s wild ambitions.
Investors are “trading the story, they’re trading the action, they’re trading the excitement, they’re trading Elon Musk, but at some point the rubber meets the road in terms of the fundamentals having to match up with that excitement,” One Point BFG Wealth Partners chief investment officer Peter Boockvar told CNBC last week.
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