Intuitive Machines' Big Cash Grab Isn't as Scary as It Looks
Key Points
Intuitive Machines began 2025 trading near $16 a share.
By late May, the stock had tripled to nearly $46 per share.
That's when Intuitive Machines decided to sell some stock, and raise a whole lot of cash.
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Intuitive Machines (NASDAQ: LUNR) spooked the stock market earlier this month, and its timing couldn't have been worse. (At least, from one perspective. More on that in a moment.)
Shares of the space stock -- which, in 2024, became the first American company to land a spacecraft on the moon, and the first American anything to return to the moon in 50 years -- are down an astounding 46% in June.
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Yes, this is partly because the SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX) IPO sucked all the oxygen out of the room last Friday, and vacuumed up all the investor cash that used to be invested in other space stocks. Still, Intuitive got the sell-off started all on its own when it announced plans on June 3 to raise $500 million in cash by selling a bunch of new shares.
Image source: Getty Images.
Timing is everything
I've got good news for Intuitive shareholders, as well as this bad news: Intuitive Machines announced its share sale soon after hitting an all-time high near $46. Assuming it's made good on its plans and been selling as many shares as it could, as fast as humanly possible, the company may still come out of this sell-off just fine in the end.
Why is that?
Consider that, at the end of 2025, Intuitive stock was trading around $16 per share. Successful contract wins combined with SpaceX IPO fever drove that price up nearly threefold through the end of May.
Did this make the stock overvalued? I think so (and this is coming from an owner of Intuitive Machines stock). Still, by the time Intuitive announced its share sale, the stock was within pennies of $40 a share -- meaning that raising $500 million might have required issuing no more than 12.5 million shares, diluting shareholders by only 7.8%.
What's more, the potential $500 million windfall from such a sale would generate plenty of cash to bridge the gap between when Intuitive is still burning cash and when it finally becomes free cash flow positive on its own (analysts expect this to happen in 2027 or early 2028). This would mean that Intuitive never has to raise cash again.
What could go wrong?
The question facing investors now is: Did Intuitive Machines manage to sell its shares and raise cash before its stock price collapsed after the SpaceX IPO?
The truth is, we don't yet know. The fact that Intuitive Machines' stock price fell so rapidly and consistently after it announced its share sale certainly suggests that the company was flooding the market with new shares this month. If it did, and if it raised enough cash fast enough, then Intuitive Machines may have accomplished its goal in time.
We'll have to wait for the company's next earnings report to know for sure, however. Intuitive Machines is due to report second-quarter results on Aug. 6. Tune in then to find out.
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Rich Smith has positions in Intuitive Machines. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Intuitive Machines. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
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