SpaceX on Tuesday showed its first report card since its blockbuster market debut in June – notching a 92% surge in revenue despite losing $541 million in the second quarter. The earnings report capped a rocky couple of months on the public market amid Wall Street jitters over the huge run-up in AI spending.
Elon Musk’s company — which has grand ambitions like building data centers in space and colonizing Mars — posted an operating loss of $143 million and an earnings per share loss of $0.09, beating analyst expectations of a loss per share of 26 cents.
The update marked the first time Musk’s rocket company has reported earnings since it listed shares at $150 in June and raised $86 billion in its record-setting IPO.
Since then, the company’s stock has plunged roughly 24%, wiping out some $500 billion in value as Wall Street has grown skittish over the eye-watering valuations of artificial intelligence companies and the mountains of cash they are plowing into AI buildouts.
SpaceX reported the second-quarter results after the bell on Tuesday. Its shared climbed in the afternoon but fell by as much as 8% in after-hours trading.
The company posted revenue of $7.8 billion while financial markets data provider LSEG had forecast $6.93 billion in revenue.
Last year, SpaceX notched a $4.9 billion loss thanks to massive AI infrastructure investments.
The company said it invested $18.37 billion in AI infrastructure, Starship and Starlink expansion in the second-quarter results.
SpaceX’s launch business, which is pulling in revenue from large contracts with NASA, lost money.
The majority of SpaceX’s revenue last year – and its only profitable segment – came from its connectivity business, which includes Starlink satellite internet service. It sells to consumers and to government and military agencies.
“It’s not out of the question that, at some point, Starlink will deliver a majority of the world’s internet, at least in countries where we are allowed to operate, which is the vast majority of countries,” Musk said on a Tuesday earnings call, according to CNBC.
SpaceX shares could be hit with additional pressure from the expiry of the company’s post-IPO lock-up period starting Thursday, which may trigger insider and early-investor shares on the market.
The company’s space business has netted several lucrative wins that could power its performance in the second half of the year.
The company garnered a $1.6 billion launch order from the Space Force in late July and won national-security satellite deals earlier this year valued at roughly $6.5 billion.
The company has also been testing its behemoth Starship rocket to show off its ability to fling even larger versions of its Starlink satellites – dubbed “V3” – into orbit.
