Will SpaceX Stock Be Higher or Lower in 1 Year? Here's My Honest Take

To call Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (NASDAQ: SPCX), better known as SpaceX, one of the most anticipated IPOs in history would be a major understatement. The company raised about $85 billion at a valuation of nearly $1.8 trillion on June 12, and by both measures, it was several times larger than any previous IPO by a U.S.-based company.

However, with the stock up significantly in the short time it's been publicly traded, is it still a good time to invest?

This is a more complicated question than you might think. There are solid arguments for and against investing in SpaceX at the current price. Here's a rundown of the bull and bear cases for the space economy pioneer, and what I could see happening over the next year.

Image source: Getty Images.

Reasons to buy SpaceX, even at the higher price

As mentioned, SpaceX raised about $85 billion in its IPO by selling shares at $135 each. The IPO was highly oversubscribed, meaning there was far more demand for shares at that price than could be distributed.

Because of the strong demand, the stock opened for live trading on IPO day at about $150 and closed at about $161, representing a 19% gain on day one. Over the next couple of days, the stock traded as high as $229.40, briefly surpassing Microsoft's (NASDAQ: MSFT) market cap. It has since retreated a bit, but as of this writing, it still sits at $185, a 37% increase over the IPO price, with a $2.43 trillion market cap.

Despite the strong gains, there are some good reasons to believe the valuation is justified.

For one thing, there's the growth story. We already know SpaceX's revenue run rate will more than double due to its recent compute deals with Anthropic and Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOGL) (NASDAQ: GOOG). What's more, Starlink not only grew revenue by 50% year-over-year in 2025, but it also has an extremely high 63% adjusted EBITDA margin, low churn, and has barely scratched the surface of its market opportunity.

Beyond this, there are a few other major components to the bull case:

• Starship has a massive opportunity to revolutionize the space economy and dramatically increase the company's revenue from the launch side of the business. Management aims to achieve commercial payload deliveries in the second half of the year, and this would likely be a significant catalyst for the stock.
• Passive ETFs, including those that track the Nasdaq-100, will be required to buy billions of dollars in SpaceX stock, regardless of price, which could put upside pressure.
• The xAI side of the business has massive optionality, and if we start to see serious progress later in the year, it could be an encouraging sign for investors.

Reasons to stay away from SpaceX stock

With all of the above in mind, there's a solid case to be made that SpaceX is overvalued, even considering its potential. The company trades for more than 100 times its trailing 12-month revenue, and many traditional valuation models indicate it's worth far less than its current market cap. For example, Morningstar puts SpaceX's fair value at just $780 billion today.

There is also the accelerated lockup expiration to worry about. The standard 180-day IPO lockup period expires in December, but SpaceX is using an unconventional schedule that will allow some insider shares to be sold shortly after its second quarter earnings report (expected in late July or early August). And then there's the possibility that the earnings report itself is a disappointment and drags on the stock.

Finally, the most ambitious part of the bull thesis is xAI, which has plans such as putting data centers in space. However, before the Anthropic and Google deals, GPU utilization at the Colossus 1 facility was just 11%, and the Grok AI platform hasn't been as successful as its larger rivals at gaining commercial traction.

Where will SpaceX stock be in 1 year?

To be perfectly clear, I don't have a crystal ball that tells me what SpaceX's stock price will be in one year, and I certainly can't predict with any degree of accuracy what it's going to do in the meantime. Using the points above, I can make a solid argument that SpaceX could be a $4 trillion company within the next year if xAI losses stabilize and Starlink maintains its growth trajectory, and I can also make the case that shares could experience a 50% drawdown from current levels under the right combination of adverse circumstances.

Matt Frankel, CFP® has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet and Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.