SpaceX stock slid to a record low on Wednesday and, by the close, was trading below its $150 market debut price. The shares fell as far as $145.20 in midday trade before finishing at $149.29, a sharp retreat that extended Tuesday’s 7% drop.
The move matters because the stock was still drawing some of the market’s strongest endorsement even as it weakened. Adam Jonas of Morgan Stanley has an Overweight rating on SpaceX and a $300 target, while most Wall Street price targets are in the $200-plus range. The company was also added to the Nasdaq-100, yet that did not stop the slide.
For readers watching the stock now, the timing is the point. SpaceX was last seen above $200 on June 16, and the latest drop leaves the name far below where many investors had already placed it in their heads. The shares are not moving in a vacuum either. Recent Nasdaq weakness may have added pressure, and the market tone around the stock has shifted from excitement to something closer to a reset.
That reset stands out because SpaceX has raised $85 billion, a sum that dwarfs Blue Origin’s reported $10 billion fundraise by about $75 billion, or more than eight times as much. Blue Origin is raising that money at a $130 billion valuation, with $4 billion from Coatue Management, $4 billion from other large investors and $2 billion from Jeff Bezos, who had been funding the company himself over the past 25 years. Bezos said in May that Blue Origin finally had enough visibility into its future and financial success to think about bringing on outside investors.
There is still a gap between the clean story and the market’s message. Blue Origin’s first public raise comes after one of its New Glenn rockets exploded during a static engine test earlier this year and destroyed the company’s only launch pad, yet investors are willing to put a large valuation on the business. SpaceX, by contrast, is taking the pressure now, even after the Nasdaq-100 inclusion and the favorable analyst coverage. On Thursday, the stock was up 1.4% in premarket trading, but that only sets up the next question: whether buyers are stepping in for real or whether Wednesday’s break below the debut price becomes the level investors remember.
