Where does the time go? In some ways, given the unavoidable hype behind its initial public offering (IPO) and subsequent stock market launch, it’s hard to believe that Space Exploration Technologies (NASDAQ: SPCX), or SpaceX, has been publicly traded for more than half a month.
Now that the heat and noise from takeoff have dissipated somewhat, let’s take a look at where the stock and company stand now and whether it’s an attractive portfolio addition within reach of the average investor.
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Holding a half-dozen
With $1,000, at SpaceX’s closing price earlier this week, you could buy six shares of the famous space company and have a bit of change left over. The question is, of course, whether you would want to own SpaceX.
Those six shares would confer very minor ownership of a very massive company active in a cluster of pushing-the-envelope activities. In fact, its name is somewhat misleading, since, in addition to space exploration, it also builds data centers, operates a satellite broadband/telecom network, manages a high-profile social media network (X, formerly Twitter), and develops artificial intelligence (AI) models.
This makes SpaceX rather sprawling and not a little ungainly. In a way, it’s a company that’s a bit all over the place, reflecting the frequently mercurial personality of its founder, CEO, and north star, Elon Musk.
That said, all those activities are at the forefront of current consumer tastes and desires. Only one, though, makes a profit.
The company divides its business not all that cleanly into three reporting units. Connectivity (containing the Starlink satellite network) earned nearly $11.4 billion in revenue in 2025. It did so by providing its around-the-Earth telecom services and necessary hardware to a broad range of clients willing to pay up for constant connectivity. Operating profitability was also high, at $4.4 billion.
The other two company divisions were deep in the red, though. The capital-intensive space segment generated nearly $4.1 billion in revenue but, due to heavy investments, posted an operating loss of $657 million. The AI unit is spending buckets of capital to build next-generation data centers. Although it brought in $3.2 billion in revenue, its operating loss was chasm-deep at almost $6.4 billion.
