SpaceX will hold its first earnings announcement on Aug. 4. The date coincides with the first lock-up expiry after its listing, meaning up to 911.5 million shares could be released to the market.

CNBC reported on July 21 that SpaceX adopted a phased sale structure at its June initial public offering, rather than the typical 180-day blanket lock-up expiration. After the first earnings announcement, insiders can sell 20 percent of the sellable portion of the locked-up shares. SpaceX designed the structure to prevent a one-off wave of large sales from increasing stock price volatility.

Additional release conditions also apply. If the stock closes more than 30 percent above the IPO price on at least 5 of the 10 trading days before the earnings announcement, another 10 percent will be released. As of July 21, the stock was down to nearly half of its intraday peak of $225.64 on June 16 and was 43 percent below its record closing high of $211.39 set the same day.

Elon Musk (일론 머스크)'s net worth exceeded $1 trillion on June 12, but fell to about $786 billion as of July 20 on the Forbes real-time billionaires list.

SpaceX shares rose 5 percent on July 21 and tried to snap a seven-session losing streak, but market attention is more focused on supply-and-demand shifts after the lock-up expiry than on earnings. With a limited free float, short positions are also rising quickly. The size of recent bearish bets has climbed to about one-third of the floating shares.

The survival probability of firms who maintain a significant short position in SpaceX over time is very low

Musk criticised short sellers head-on. In a post on X, formerly Twitter, he wrote: "The survival probability of firms who maintain a significant short position in SpaceX over time is very low." It was a response to short sellers aggressively increasing bets during the recent sharp drop in the share price.

Investors are also watching the core space business schedule. After cancelling a launch on July 21, SpaceX plans to launch 24 Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit on July 22 using a Falcon 9 rocket. It is the second launch cancellation in about a week. SpaceX also plans to resume a Starship launch on July 24 after halting it last week due to an engine ignition failure.

Musk explained the cause of the Starship launch halt, saying: "Some engines did not ignite, and the automatic launch abort activated." SpaceX is modifying the propulsion system to resolve the engine issue.

Starship is seen as a key facility for expanding the Starlink satellite internet service and carrying out the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)'s Artemis programme. NASA aims to return astronauts to the lunar surface in 2028. Musk has called Starship the "holy grail" of space travel and has said he plans to use it in the long term for space tourism and crewed missions to Mars.

Ahead of the earnings announcement, the expansion of its cloud business is also in focus. SpaceX acquired Musk's artificial intelligence venture xAI in February and now operates SpaceXAI. SpaceXAI owns and operates a data centre and power plant in the greater Memphis area. Google, Anthropic and Reflection have agreed to lease surplus computing resources at the facility, and SpaceX is reported to be discussing ways to provide computing resources to the U.S. Department of Defense.

Earnings for Musk's other listed company, Tesla, are also scheduled for July 23. Tesla investors submitted questions for management in advance through the Say Technologies website. Among the SpaceX-related questions, Tesla investors asked how Tesla and SpaceX would cooperate at the Terafab semiconductor plant to be built in Grimes County, Texas. Under the current plan, Tesla is expected to handle research and development, while SpaceX is expected to take charge of production.