SpaceX Stock Is Nearly 30% Below Its Post-IPO High. Here's What Facebook's Stock Did From the Same Spot.

SpaceX (NASDAQ:SPCX) went public at $135 per share in June, and its stock set a record close of $201.80 on June 16, its third day of trading. At roughly $144 as I write, shares are about 29% below that peak.

Facebook, now Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META), has been in that spot. It spent long stretches of its first year as a public company a third or more below its own post-IPO high. And I think how it finally got out says a lot about what SpaceX shareholders might need to see.

Image source: Getty Images.

Facebook's first year

Facebook priced its initial public offering (IPO) at $38 per share on May 17, 2012, and the stock closed its first day of trading at $38.23. That close was its high for over a year.

By June 5, the stock had closed at $25.87, around a third below the first-day close. It bounced into the low $30s later in June, then dropped to a closing low of $17.73 on Sept. 4 -- another 31% below the June 5 mark.

Then it rebounded, and by late November 2012, around three months after the bottom, Facebook was back near $26 -- again about a third below its high.

SpaceX has already followed the first half of that path. Its stock first closed over a third below the record on July 16, then dropped to a closing low of $108.27 on Aug. 5. Now, around three months past that low, it sits about where Facebook sat in late November 2012.

But Facebook didn't return to its high from there. The stock closed at $26.51 on July 24, 2013, almost exactly where it was eight months before, after rising as high as $32.47 in January and sliding to $22.90 in June.

One report moved Facebook's stock

Facebook's problem was specific. Its IPO filing warned that more use of its mobile products, "where we do not currently display ads," instead of PCs could hit revenue.

Showing how fast that problem was shrinking, mobile was 14% of Facebook's advertising revenue in the third quarter of 2012, around 23% in the fourth quarter, and about 30% in the first quarter of 2013. Next came the second-quarter 2013 report on July 24. Mobile had reached about 41% of ad revenue, and total revenue rose 53% year over year to $1.81 billion -- a pickup from 32% growth in the third quarter of 2012.

That report seemed to settle the doubt. The stock jumped around 30% the next day, and within two weeks it had passed its $38 IPO price and hit a new closing high.

What does Facebook's path say about SpaceX?

The most useful lesson, I think, is about patience. A stock that bounces off its low can go nowhere for months, even as revenue rises quickly.

But the two companies are very different. Facebook earned most of its money from ads, and its doubt boiled down to one number, mobile's share of ad revenue. SpaceX runs rocket launches, the Starlink satellite internet service, and an artificial intelligence (AI) arm that rents out computing power and sells AI software and ads -- now its largest segment by revenue.

SpaceX is also growing much faster, with third-quarter revenue up 161% year over year to $14.6 billion. But it's spending on a scale Facebook never did. Purchases of property, plant, and equipment were $48.1 billion in the first nine months of 2026, against $13.1 billion in operating cash flow. Facebook, in contrast, produced around $1.4 billion in free cash flow in the first half of 2013.

For SpaceX, the doubt is whether the AI spending pays off. Management expects first-quarter 2027 revenue of $33 billion to $37 billion, over twice the third quarter's. Of course, CEO Elon Musk said SpaceX rents its computing power at "effectively the spot-market rate," so that revenue may swing with rental prices.

At about $144, SpaceX is worth roughly $2 trillion, or about 14 times sales if the first-quarter range holds for a full year. It's arguably a fair price for a company growing so fast, though only if the guidance lands.

Ultimately, Facebook's first year suggests a third below the high can be a long place to wait, and the wait ended only when the business answered its biggest doubt. But it can't say when SpaceX gets its answer, or if it'll be a good one.

I wouldn't buy SpaceX shares because Facebook finally recovered. What would move me is SpaceX posting first-quarter 2027 revenue in management's range.

Daniel Sparks and his clients do not have positions in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Meta Platforms. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.