Elon Musk Mocks Bears as SpaceX Stock Jumps 9%, Beats Revenue Estimates: 'I Try to Warn Them'

Elon Musk taunted SpaceX's short sellers on Tuesday with the post 'I try to warn them, but they just double down,' and the shares jumped 9.4% to $125.33 (£93) by the close. Hours later, the rocket and satellite company's first results as a listed business cleared Wall Street's revenue forecast, showing $7.81B (£5.8B) against the $6.93B (£5.2B) that analysts polled by the data firm LSEG expected.

The celebration lasted about as long as the closing bell. Capital spending of $18.4B (£13.7B) for the quarter, some $5B above forecasts, sent the stock down as much as 8% in extended trading before it clawed back part of the fall.

A 34% Short Position Meets a 92% Revenue Jump

The bet against the company had grown enormous by results day. The analytics firm S3 Partners counted 219.3M shares sold short as of 29 July, about 34% of the tradable float and worth some $24.6B (£18.3B). Some 95% of the stock available to borrow was already out on loan. Those figures drew Musk's jab, his second in three weeks after a July post telling short sellers their survival odds were low, as the post below shows.

The quarter gave him a top line to gloat about. Revenue rose 92% from $4.1B (£3.1B) a year earlier, and the net loss narrowed to $541M (£403M), a 9-cent loss per share, where analysts expected 26 cents. Adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortisation (EBITDA) came in at $3.5B (£2.6B) against a $2B (£1.5B) consensus. The company lost $4.9B (£3.7B) across last year, largely on its build-out of computing infrastructure, which is why the spending line draws as much scrutiny as the sales one.

Finance chief Bret Johnsen credited 'significant margin expansion led by our new AI compute agreements,' the deals under which SpaceX rents computing power to artificial intelligence (AI) developers. Starlink, the satellite broadband arm, reached 12M subscribers, double a year earlier and 17% more than in the first quarter. Average revenue per user of $66 (£49), however, sits well below the $85 (£63) each customer paid last summer. Musk told analysts that Nvidia would be the sole supplier for the company's AI chips.

Heavy Spending Meets Thursday's Share Unlock

SpaceX ended June with $93.5B (£69.7B) in cash after raising $85.7B (£63.9B) in its June flotation, the largest on record, while debt and finance leases climbed to $36.8B (£27.4B). How the quarter measured up against Wall Street's numbers is easiest to see side by side, as the chart below shows.

Thursday brings the next test. The first lockup expiry frees early holders to sell, and S3 Partners estimates the event will more than double the tradable pool from roughly 640M shares, about 5% of the company, to some 12%.

The short build-up itself was rapid. S3 Partners' count stood at 23.3M shares in mid-June and grew almost tenfold in six weeks, leaving the rocket maker among the most heavily shorted names on the US market.

The stock's short history explains the nerves. Floated at $135 (£101), the shares opened at $150 (£112) on 12 June and touched $225 (£168) within days. By Monday, they had given up nearly half of that peak value, closing at $114.53 (£85), with July's failed Starship engine ignition feeding the slide. The whole round trip, from flotation to rebound, is traced in the chart below.

The professionals are split rather than uniformly bearish, since 23 of the 28 analysts covering the company rate it a buy, and the average price target sits far above the current price.

Short sellers, for their part, were sitting on about $8.3B (£6.2B) of paper profit going into the numbers, according to S3 Partners, and Tuesday took a bite out of it without settling the argument. The revenue line went Musk's way, the spending line went the bears' way, and Thursday's flood of newly sellable shares will test which side doubles down next.

Disclaimer: Our digital media content is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Please conduct your own analysis or seek professional advice before investing. Remember, investments are subject to market risks, and past performance does not guarantee future returns.