Space Exploration Technologies (NASDAQ: SPCX) has gained 32% since August 1, and the operational backdrop earns that move. The complication is a stock trading at 66 times trailing twelve-month sales while still posting a $1.3 billion net loss in the second quarter of 2026.
The case for SPCX starts with the AI unit, xAI, which Elon Musk has gathered under the SpaceX corporate structure alongside the launch business and Starlink. That segment grew 247% year over year in Q2. The company also closed the acquisition of coding company Cursor last week; Cursor carries a $4 billion run rate, according to reports. Management has identified what it calls a $28.5 trillion total addressable market over the next few years, with $26.5 trillion of that allocated to AI. Total revenue rose 92% in Q2, beating Wall Street estimates, and the company reported $14.1 billion in cloud contract revenue in the quarter, with Anthropic and Alphabet among the named clients.
Starlink adds a different kind of ballast. The connectivity business reported $1.7 billion in net income in Q2, with 12 million subscribers at quarter-end, double the count from a year prior. New agreements with American Airlines and SoftBank extend the carrier footprint, and management has said no real competitors exist in the market at this time. On the launch side, SpaceX is the largest rocket launcher in the world and has completed 78 missions so far this year, pressing toward a goal of fully reusable rockets. A late-July test produced what SpaceX described as its softest splashdown ever.
The counterargument
About 75% of Wall Street analysts rate SPCX a buy, which is broad but softer than it looks. Three analysts carry outright sell ratings. The median price target sits at $217, roughly 55% above current levels, though that figure is pulled up by one outlier at $800. The stock has also fallen 29% from its post-listing high, meaning buyers who chased the initial run have not uniformly been rewarded.
On balance, the revenue growth is real and Starlink's unit economics are real. What 66 times trailing sales demands is that xAI's growth compounds fast enough to convert the consolidated loss. The line to watch is whether xAI's $14.1 billion in quarterly cloud contract revenue starts generating margin, because at this multiple, the market has already priced in the assumption that it will.