Just over a month after Elon Musk’s rocket company SpaceX made its stock market debut, the share price has tumbled below its initial listing, leaving early investors facing losses.
The price of a single share fell to $132.62 on Wednesday, dipping beneath the $135 IPO price set in June. Compared with the stock’s on-the-day high, it is now down 41%.
“SpaceX shares fell below IPO price of $135 to $132.62, down 41% from peak.”
The decline comes after an initial investor frenzy that briefly valued SpaceX above Amazon and Microsoft. But the stock has been volatile since trading began, and the wider tech sector has also faced a tumultuous few weeks.
On Wednesday, SpaceX shares fell more than 2%, while the Nasdaq index, where it is listed, slipped just 0.2%. Analysts say the company is being treated as a proxy for AI investment. Earlier this year SpaceX acquired Musk’s AI start-up xAI, now renamed SpaceXAI, best known for the controversial chatbot Grok. Through that deal, SpaceX now leases data centre capacity to other tech firms.
But its main business remains rockets and Starlink satellites. When Starlink announced price cuts in Memphis, Tennessee, amid local concerns over a data centre project, SpaceX shares dropped 8%.
“There hasn’t been anything lately to remind people of some of the catalysts for why they bought SpaceX,” said Steve Sosnick, chief market analyst at Interactive Brokers.
SpaceX is expected to release its first public earnings report in August. Sosnick cautioned: “The fact that a stock has fallen a couple of dollars below its IPO price in itself is not a tragedy, but SpaceX is heavily watched and has an important role in investor psyche.”