SpaceX Stock's Real Test Arrives in Late July, Not in the Post-IPO Swoon

SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX) has put newly minted shareholders through a brutal first week on the public market. The company priced its initial public offering at $82 a share, jumped 15% to $94 on day one, then reversed course hard. By Friday’s close it sat at $71 – down 13% from the offer price and 24% from the intraday peak. Options markets had priced in an implied move of roughly 8% in either direction for the first month, according to Trade Alert data. That volatility landed exactly on schedule.

The pullback follows a familiar script. A blockbuster IPO draws heavy allocation to institutions, some of that stock flips the moment trading rules permit, profit-takers join the selling, and options hedgers compound the pressure. SpaceX’s offering was oversubscribed and the float was tight. The selling has been real. Two events in the second half of July will do far more to shape the stock’s trajectory than the first fortnight’s price action.

SpaceX’s initial quarterly earnings report as a public company is the first. The call is expected in the last week of July. The company has not confirmed the exact date. The S-1 showed Starlink generated 68% of 2025 revenue, up from 52% the prior year. Launch services account for most of the rest, with a small contribution from Dragon crew missions. Investors will get their first look at subscriber growth under the scrutiny of a public filing. SpaceX disclosed 4.2 million Starlink subscribers at year-end. A deceleration in additions would pressure the assumption that Starlink can fund Starship development on its own cash flow.

The second catalyst carries even more weight for the long-term valuation thesis. Starship’s previous orbital attempt ended in a fireball over the Gulf of Mexico. SpaceX collected enough data to clear a path to the next launch. The Federal Aviation Administration is finalizing a revised launch license that could arrive in mid-July. A successful flight – a full orbital mission with a controlled splashdown of both stages – would unlock the ability to deploy larger Starlink satellite batches and compete for heavy-lift government contracts. A failure would push the schedule into 2027 and make the $85 billion post-IPO valuation harder to defend.

The two events are connected. A successful Starship test validates the technology roadmap that anchors both Starlink’s expansion and the NASA Human Landing System contract. A strong earnings report shows the core business is growing fast enough to fund that roadmap without another share sale. Together they create a binary risk that the stock’s first-week volatility only hints at.

Options liquidity is thin relative to large-cap tech. Open interest on July 21 expiration contracts has climbed, and implied volatility on those weekly strikes points to an expected move of more than 10% in either direction. That matches the binary nature of the two catalysts.

The broader stock market analysis suggests that high-growth IPOs often find their footing after the first earnings report, not before. For SpaceX, the next few weeks will be about filling in the blanks. The post-IPO drop was the easy part to explain.