Key Points
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An investment in SpaceX could deliver strong returns if bullish forecasts are right, but its value will depend on how several ambitious long-term projects play out.
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The stock has enormous long-term potential, but it already trades at a rich valuation.
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As the IPO’s lockup periods expire, insider share sales will likely put downward pressure on the stock price.
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For years, the only way to own a piece of Elon Musk’s rocket company was to be an insider or a venture fund. That changed in June, when Space Exploration Technologies (NASDAQ: SPCX), better known as SpaceX, became publicly traded.
Now that anyone with a brokerage account can buy in, a fair question follows: What could a modest $2,000 stake actually turn into?
What $2,000 buys in SpaceX today
SpaceX opened its first day of trading at $150, and after a volatile debut period in which it surged to a high of $225.64 in just a few days, it has retreated back toward that opening price. Today, it again trades at around $150 per share. At that price, $2,000 would buy about 13 shares. That is the starting point for every scenario below, and it is worth remembering that the stock has already swung hard in its first weeks, a sign of how much disagreement exists about what the company is worth.
The analyst community leans bullish. Six major banks began coverage with buy-equivalent ratings on the stock, and the consensus 12-month target sits near $210.
If SpaceX reached that level, a $2,000 investment would grow to roughly $2,800 — a gain of about 40% in a year. Morgan Stanley is even more optimistic, pairing an overweight rating with a $300 target that would push the same stake to around $4,000. These figures are opinions rather than promises, but they help explain why the stock has drawn such a crowd.
Here is the part that gets lost in the target prices. SpaceX’s rocket launch business is real and profitable, yet the company’s towering valuation is predicated on several major things that have not happened yet: mass Starlink revenue, a working Starship economy, and Musk’s ambitious plan to build and deploy vast numbers of AI data center satellites in orbit. Buy the stock, and you are paying today for outcomes that may arrive years from now, if they arrive at all.
The risks behind the return
Not everyone on Wall Street is convinced. The firm CFRA Research has put a sell rating and a $115 price target on SpaceX stock, based on the view that too much of the company’s story is still speculative. If it’s right, a $2,000 position opened today will shrink to about $1,530 a year from now — a loss of about 23%. Newly public stocks also face nearly inevitable selling pressure as their insider lockup periods expire, and a market cap in the trillions leaves a company with little leeway to disappoint investors without consequences for the share price.
A $2,000 investment in SpaceX is less a bet on rockets than a bet on which version of Musk’s company wins out: the steady rocket launch provider, or the trillion-dollar space-and-AI empire the bulls imagine. The range of possible outcomes here is unusually wide, so anyone buying would do well to size their position to reflect that uncertainty.
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Micah Zimmerman has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
