What a $3,000 Investment in SpaceX Could Be Worth by 2030

Space Exploration Technologies (NASDAQ: SPCX), commonly called SpaceX, completed its initial public offering (IPO) on June 12. Investors were anxiously awaiting this much-hyped IPO.

In its more than two months as a public company, the share price has been volatile. After going public at $135, the stock closed at $160.95 on the first day of trading. The closing price reached a high of $211.39 on June 16 and a low of $113.29 on July 27.

Clearly, predicting short-term price movements seems pointless. But what about looking ahead a few years? With a few key assumptions, investors can try to project the stock price and the potential value of an investment at the end of 2030.

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Money-losing business

While SpaceX has been growing revenue, it's losing money. First-quarter revenue rose 15.4% year over year to $4.7 billion, but the company's loss under generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) widened from $528 million to $4.3 billion.

For all of 2025, SpaceX lost $4.9 billion, versus a $791 million profit in 2024. The widening loss came despite a 33.2% increase in revenue to $18.7 billion.

Digging deeper, SpaceX's businesses span a range of activities, including building and launching rockets and operating a broadband data network, an artificial intelligence business (xAI), and the social media site X (formerly Twitter).

It operates these businesses under the connectivity, space, and AI segments, but only the first one currently operates profitably. Connectivity's first-quarter revenue gained 31.6% year over year to $3.3 billion, while operating income rose 15% to $1.2 million. Space saw revenue drop 28.4% year over year to $619 million, and AI's top line increased 12.5%.

Doing some math

To calculate SpaceX's future stock price, you need to project sales and apply a price-to-sales multiple. Ideally, you'd use earnings and the price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio, but SpaceX loses money.

It's challenging but necessary to come up with sales growth and a P/S multiple. SpaceX went public with a 94 P/S multiple. That's more than 25 times the S&P 500 index's current P/S ratio of 3.7.

Assuming 30% annualized revenue growth through 2030, SpaceX's top line will increase from 2025's $18.7 billion to $69.4 billion.

Applying today's P/S multiple of 78 results in a $5.4 trillion market cap, more than triple the current $1.5 trillion. That means your $3,000 investment would grow to more than $10,800.

Of course, that's using optimistic assumptions. What if the P/S multiple contracts to a still-high 30 and revenue grows at an average annualized rate of 15%?

In that case, revenue would reach $37.6 billion at the end of 2030. Applying the 30 multiple results in a $1.1 trillion market cap. Under this scenario, you'd have lost 25%, and your $3,000 investment would be worth only $2,250.

Working through this exercise suggests the market, despite the stock price drop, is still pricing in fast sales growth. Shareholders could be very disappointed -- and poorer -- if SpaceX fails to meet expectations.

Lawrence Rothman, CFA has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.