SpaceX sets earnings date, triggering first big share unlock

Shares of SpaceX gained 5% on Tuesday as it attempted to snap a seven-day losing streak after its debut earnings reportThis coincides with a major share lockup expiry.

Elon Musk’s aerospace and defense contractor on Monday announced its first earnings report on Aug. 4 following its record IPO. The date also triggers the company’s unique lock-in period; This allows insiders to start selling their shares earlier than the typical 180-day period.

SpaceX took a gradual approach, allowing insiders to sell some of their stock at earlier intervals to avoid mass sell-offs and price fluctuations. The first earnings report clears the way for investors to sell 20% of their eligible locked shares, for a total of up to 911.5 million shares.

An additional 10% may be released if the stock closes at least 30% above the public offering price on five of the ten trading days entered in the report.

As of Monday’s close, SpaceX shares had lost nearly half their value from the company’s intraday high of $225.64 per share on June 16, or 43.% On the same day, its all-time high closing price was $211.39.

Musk’s net worth, which exceeded $1 trillion as of June 12, was around $786 billion on Monday. Forbes Real Time Billionaires Index.

In recent weeks, the stock has also become a prime target for short sellers; The downward trend last reached about one-third of the company’s free float.

Given the lock-in, only a small fraction of the shares are available for trading, and short sellers are increasing their bets as the stock falls. Musk attacked the group to post On Monday on social media platform X.

“Firms that maintain a significant short position in SpaceX over time are unlikely to survive,” he wrote.

SpaceX plans to launch a spacecraft Falcon 9 rocket It will carry 24 Starlink satellites into low orbit on Tuesday after scrubbing the mission before liftoff on Monday.

This was SpaceX’s second canceled launch in a week. The company plans to launch its massive Starship rocket on Thursday after shutting down the mission last week due to engine ignition failure.

“Some of the engines did not start, causing the launch to be automatically aborted,” Musk said in a post on SpaceX’s social network X. The company said it modified the rocket’s propulsion system to fix the engine problems.

Investors are closely watching Starship test flights after SpaceX priced shares at $135 in June, raising a record $85.7 billion in the largest-ever IPO.

The giant rocket, the largest rocket ever built or flown, is key to SpaceX’s goal to scale its Starlink satellite internet service and to fulfill various obligations to the US space agency NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to return astronauts to the lunar surface in 2028.

Musk has also called Starship the “holy grail” of space travel and would one day like to see it used for space tourism and human missions to Mars.

Investors are also watching SpaceX’s growing cloud computing contracts. The company acquired Musk’s artificial intelligence startup xAI, now called SpaceXAI, in February, becoming the owner and operator of vast data centers and a power plant in Greater Memphis.

Google, Anthropic and Reflection have signed a deal to lease excess computing capacity at these facilities from SpaceXAI, now known as the xAI company. The company also reportedly in talks Providing computing capacity to the Pentagon.

Musk’s first publicly traded company Tesla’sis expected to announce its earnings after the bell on Wednesday. Institutional investors submitted some questions to Tesla leadership in advance via the Say Technologies website.

Among SpaceX-related topics, Tesla investors want to know how the two companies plan to collaborate on Terafab, a chip factory Musk plans to build in Grimes County, Texas, where Tesla is expected to lead R&D and SpaceX is expected to lead production.

As CNBC previously reported, many of Musk’s fans would like to see his empire solidify and see SpaceX and Tesla merge at some point. SpaceX COO and President Gwynne Shotwell told CNBC that doing so would make Musk’s life easier.