SpaceX reported a loss of $541 million in its first quarterly earnings report as a public company, but revenue nearly doubled to $7.8 billion compared to the same period a year earlier, beating analyst expectations. The results landed Tuesday, the same day the company's stock closed at $125.33, well below the $150 initial offering price from its early June IPO.
According to NPR, SpaceX raised $75 billion in what became the largest initial public offering in history. Shares shot to an intraday high of $225.64 in mid-June before falling steadily through the summer. More than $1 trillion has been erased from the company's market capitalization since that peak. On Tuesday, shares jumped more than 9 percent ahead of the earnings report, then gave back much of those gains in after-hours trading.
The loss came despite $7.8 billion in revenue, up more than 90 percent from the year-earlier period. LSEG had forecast revenue of more than $6.9 billion. Bloomberg analysts had forecast $6.8 billion. The company ended the second quarter with $100 billion in cash, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings.
SpaceX spent $18.37 billion during the quarter on Starlink and Starship expansion, as well as AI infrastructure. The company won $6 billion in new U.S. government contracts for Starshield, its national security satellite system, and completed two successful launches of its Starship V3 in the last 90 days.
On an earnings call, Elon Musk described a company pressing into multiple frontiers at once. He said SpaceX is launching more satellites into orbit than the rest of the world combined and that its Starlink network may deliver "a majority of the world's internet" in less than 10 years.
"This is not some far future, distant thing," Musk said of plans to place AI data centers in orbit. "The SpaceX team is solving some of the hardest engineering problems in the history of humanity and I think the team is succeeding."
The company said it expects to launch its Starmind AI satellites next year. SpaceX separately announced a partnership with Nvidia to use its chips in those orbital computing satellites. In its AI business, the company reported an operating loss of $1.2 billion and released what it described as its most powerful Grok model yet. The company also faces lawsuits in multiple countries over Grok being used to generate sexualized images of people without their consent.
Al Jazeera reported that Starlink and SpaceX's connectivity operations remain the company's primary financial engine. The company is spending heavily to expand coverage, increase capacity and develop direct-to-device mobile services for smartphones.
Selling pressure may increase later this week. A lockup period that prevented SpaceX employees and other insiders from selling shares will expire Thursday, which will more than double the supply of publicly tradable shares. In the first quarter, SpaceX reported a net loss of nearly $4.3 billion.
