Jim Cramer told viewers on Wednesday to stop judging SpaceX by one rough trading session and start thinking about whether the company could matter for decades. On CNBC's Mad Money, he said SpaceX could be “a 100-year piece of paper,” the kind of investment tied to a future far beyond the next earnings print.
The timing mattered because SpaceX shares fell 13.61% on Wednesday after the company reported its first quarterly results since its June IPO. Investors latched onto sharply higher capital expenditures, even though the company also posted second-quarter revenue of $7.81 billion, up 92% year over year and above the Street consensus estimate of $6.93 billion. That is the split-screen reaction Wall Street often gives a fast-growing company: the top line can look explosive, while the market punishes what it takes to keep that growth going.
Cramer argued that SpaceX belongs in the second camp only if the lens is wide enough. He compared it with century-long railroad bonds, saying people once bought 100-year paper because they believed the payoff would come in time, and he asked viewers whether their children or grandchildren would be doing things on the Moon someday. He also said he would never recommend SpaceX if Elon Musk were not involved and said he was confident Musk can raise all the money he needs.
That view rests on more than moon-shot language. SpaceX ended the quarter with $100 billion in cash and cash equivalents and a $47.5 billion backlog, while Cramer pointed to Starship, Starlink and the company's expanding AI compute business as reasons the long-term case still exists. SpaceX also has compute-rental agreements with Anthropic and Alphabet Inc.'s Google, giving the story a commercial layer that goes beyond rockets alone.
Still, the market is not being asked to ignore the near term. About 911 million previously locked-up shares are set to become eligible for trading, which can add selling pressure just as investors are already weighing higher spending against growth. That is why Cramer left the stock with a warning wrapped inside the optimism: one day it could be a huge winner, but he does not know when that day will arrive.
For now, the question is not whether SpaceX has a long horizon. It does. The question is whether investors can sit through the capital spending, the coming wave of tradable shares and the kind of volatility that turns a 92% revenue jump into a 13.61% drop in the same week.
