SpaceX reported it lost more than half a billion dollars in its first quarterly report as a public company, but the loss was less than Wall Street expected and revenue soared.
The company run by Elon Musk reported a loss of $541 million, or 9 cents per share, in the three months through June, less than half what financial analysts had expected. Revenue jumped to $7.8 billion, up more than 90% from the year-earlier period.
Musk will field questions from investors and financial analysts soon on a conference call.
Stock in the rocket, satellite communications and AI company has fallen by roughly half since its June peak shortly after an initial public offering that briefly made Musk the world’s first trillionaire.
Investors have knocked the share price down on worries Musk had oversold them on the company’s future prospects for space travel and colonization, among other issues. They’re also bracing for volatile trading as some company insiders get the opportunity to sell shares after the expiration of what’s known as a lockup provision later in the week.
The shares jumped 19% on their first day of trading, making Musk the first-ever trillionaire. The subsequent drop in SpaceX, as well as a decline in the shares of Musk’s electric vehicle company Tesla, have knocked his wealth down to $783 billion, according to Forbes.
Part visionary, part salesman, Musk is likely to be asked on the conference call about when he expects to finish testing SpaceX’s giant Starship rockets that NASA hopes to use to put astronauts on the moon again, his plans for its satellite network and the prospects of putting football-field sized data centers in orbit.
Given rumors of SpaceX possibly merging with Musk’s Tesla car company, he may also face questions about that tie-up but that is likely to yield few details. Neither company has confirmed plans for a combination and Musk has parried questions before by noting securities regulations bar him from discussing the issue.
SpaceX insiders were barred from selling in the public offering in June but that prohibition begins to ease on Thursday when more than 900 million shares are released for trading, more than doubling the amount currently available for trading. The lockup release is the first of several tranches of stock that will be freed to trade over the next several months.
The prospect of more supply has weighed on the shares, which closed Tuesday at $125.33, down from both the peak of $225 in June and also the IPO price of $135.
The Starship rocket successfully deployed satellites in space during a test late last month. Future tests could include trying to use giant arms at its Starbase launching site in Texas to grab the spacecraft and its booster upon their hovering return to earth.
SpaceX’s satellite communication business, Starlink, is a big cash generator for the company with contracts around the world. The company also runs a money-losing AI business, known for its Grok tool, as well as the social media platform X, the renamed Twitter.
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An earlier version of this story erroneously reported that 900,000 shares will be released for trading later this week. It should have said more than 900 million.
—Bernard Condon, AP business writer