This Speculative Industrial Stock Could Be Worth $4 Billion by Mid-2026

If you're anything like me and grew up steeped in Star Trek, Star Wars, Mass Effect, and Warhammer 40,000, there has to be some part of you excited by the advances made in space travel in recent years.

Image source: Getty Images.

SpaceX is catching rockets for reuse and NASA is planning its next set of lunar missions, dubbed "Artemis." NASA plans to create a space station in lunar orbit, bringing us one step closer to a permanent extraterrestrial colony.

And while you can't invest in SpaceX yet, Intuitive Machines (NASDAQ: LUNR) has similar potential. It was one of NASA's top 20 partners in terms of contract value in 2024 and is major contributor to the Artemis program. In fact, it's listed by name alongside far larger companies like Northrop Grumman (NYSE: NOC) and Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) as one of the program's partners on NASA's website.

No longer a Moonage Daydream

Intuitive Machines is helping to bring mankind's dreams of space exploration to fruition. Its business is incredibly complex engineering projects but fortunately it's still easy to understand.

The company is engaged in the satellite industry and, through its recent acquisition of Lanteris Space, has launched over 300 spacecraft, including geostationary satellites, into orbit. It has several orders from NASA totaling $4.82 billion for lunar satellite infrastructure. It is also expanding its Houston facility and has acquired KinetX Inc. for $30 million to meet the new satellite demand.

But it's Intuitive Machines' delivery and infrastructure segments that interest me most. The company's third lunar mission, IM-3, is slated for late-spring/early summer of this year and if it's successful I think it could send Intuitive Machines' stock into the stratosphere. If successful, the mission would prove that Intuitive Machines has fixed the issues with its lander exposed during its previous two NASA missions.

Intuitive Machines has already had two partially successful missions but has yet to prove to NASA and to investors it can land vehicles on the moon cleanly. The payloads of both IM-1 "Odysseus" and IM-2 "Athena" did make it to the lunar surface and were deployed.

Odysseus was the first American-made object to land on the moon in half a century, but it missed its target and broke a lander leg, which caused it to tip over. Despite a rapidly draining battery the lander did manage to complete some of its mission objectives.

Like Odysseus, Athena made it to the moon and also achieved several of its objectives, but it also missed its target and tipped over, which rendered it unable to deploy its solar panels.

IM-3 and its unnamed lander are being conducted with lessons learned in IM-1 and IM-2. And, while success is not guaranteed in any business venture, especially not one as complex as landing an object on the moon, which makes this a speculative stock that relies on IM-3 and future missions being a success.

Make no mistake, there is a lot riding on IM-3 and if it fails Intuitive Machines is likely to tumble in share price again. The company does have a fourth mission slated for 2027 and two more after that before this particular contract is up. However, I don't foresee landing new contracts being a huge problem for Intuitive Machines. The company has a backlog of $235 million worth of contracts as of September 30, 2025 and it is in talks with more potential customers, both public and private. In fact, the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory awarded Intuitive Machines another $8.2 million to develop space-based nuclear power systems. .

Intuitive Machines' financials are about what you would expect for a start-up company in a relatively niche industry but it is showing improvement there. Revenue for the third quarter of 2025 totaled $52.4 million and net losses shrank from $81.1 million in Q3 2024 to $10.3 million in Q3 2025.

Finally, the company is sitting on cash reserves of $622 million to most recent quarter (MRQ) debt of $371 million.

The stock is up 94% over the past six months likely in anticipation Intuitive Machines' next lunar mission. This is definitely a more speculative play, but one with a lot of real potential behind it. Give Intuitive Machines a look if you want to get in on the ground floor of the space economy. It's already worth $3.89 billion, so $4 billion is very likely if IM-3 is a success.

James Hires has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends Lockheed Martin. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.