SpaceX faces investor scrutiny in first earnings call after IPO

SpaceX was set to release its first earnings report as a public company on Tuesday, giving investors their first quarterly chance to press Elon Musk on how the rocket maker allocates cash, manages delays and balances its growing ambitions. The June 2026 IPO turned the company into a public stock almost overnight, and the debut came with shares already swinging sharply.

The company’s listing was the largest IPO in U.S. history, but the market’s early enthusiasm did not last cleanly. Shares surged after the offering and then sputtered, while CNBC said the earnings date set up SpaceX’s first big insider share unlock, with as many as 911.5 million shares due to become tradable on Aug. 6 and valued at as much as $116 billion. That created a new kind of accountability: public investors could now ask not only whether the business was growing, but who would get to cash out and when.

The sharpest questions centered on Starship. Reuters reported in May that SpaceX had already spent more than $15 billion on the program, a staggering sum for a vehicle Musk has cast as the company’s path to airline-like, high-frequency rocketry. But the technical schedule has remained uneven. In April, Musk said the next Starship test flight would take place in May, not April as originally planned, underscoring how often the program’s timeline slips in step with its development costs.

Government business was another pressure point. SpaceX’s IPO filing showed U.S. federal agencies accounted for about 20% of revenue last year, a reminder that the company’s cash flow still depends heavily on public contracts even as it sells itself as a future space platform. Recent awards have kept that dependence visible, including a $2.29 billion Space Force contract for a military space data network and a separate $1.6 billion Space Force order for 18 Falcon 9 launches.

Investors were also weighing how much attention Musk could devote to SpaceX while managing Tesla and xAI. Reuters reported that Musk had kept merger speculation with Tesla alive by citing growing overlap, and another report said SpaceX’s AI spending was now under Wall Street scrutiny. Even the shareholder questions reflected the unusual mix of enthusiasm and skepticism, with some asking to paint a rocket pink and to name a Starship Shipy McShipface.