SpaceX Went Nowhere for a Month, but It Easily Beat Other Space Stocks
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SpaceX (SPCX) trades near its $150 opening price, but a flat price performance is a relative win when the broader space sector is down sharply.
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Virgin Galactic (SPCE) crashed 45% and Rocket Lab (RKLB) fell 22% over the past month as sector rotation hammered speculative space names hard.
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SpaceX's $1.96 trillion market cap and Starlink's global reach anchor the bull case, but its surrendered IPO pop and rich valuation are real risks.
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Shares of SpaceX (NASDAQ:SPCX) are trading at $148 and change on Friday afternoon, essentially back where they opened one month ago. That flat tape looks dull on the surface, but against the rest of the space sector, it's the best performance in the group.
SpaceX priced its debut at $135 but commenced trading at $150 on June 12, and has since round-tripped to basically the same price. That's disappointing, no doubt, but SpaceX's peers fared worse over the past month.
The market cap of Elon Musk's space company sits at $1.96 trillion, making SpaceX one of the largest listings ever and by far the biggest name in the sector. That scarcity value may have helped to shield SPCX stock from the broader sector rotation.
Peers Sold Off, SpaceX Held the Line
It's been a challenging month for the space sector overall. Speculative, high-beta space names have been hit with profit-taking and cooling risk appetite over the past four weeks, though SpaceX evidently refused to participate on the downside.
Over the trailing month, Virgin Galactic (NYSE:SPCE) is down 45%, Intuitive Machines (NASDAQ:LUNR) is down 40%, and Rocket Lab (NASDAQ:RKLB) is down 22%. AST SpaceMobile (NASDAQ:ASTS) is down 16%, and Planet Labs (NYSE:PL) is down 15%.
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The takeaway isn't that SpaceX rallied, since it actually popped and dropped. Being flat versus the opening price still counts as a win in this hard-hit sector.
The Space Sector Proxy Confirms the Rotation
The Procure Space ETF (NYSEARCA:UFO) is down 10% over the same month, though it did cushion the space sector group's drawdowns with satellite operators and aerospace specialists. The UFO ETF is a narrow, volatile thematic fund with concentration risk, though it's not leveraged. The fund's top holdings include Planet Labs at 6% and Rocket Lab at 5%, both of which weighed on the UFO ETF.