SpaceX is set to report its first earnings since its IPO after losing more than $500 billion in market value in a little over a month.

On Aug. 3, CNBC reported that SpaceX shares fell for 4 straight weeks after their first trading day on June 12. The stock has dropped more than 50 percent from an intraday peak. An assessment says no big tech IPO since Facebook's 2012 listing has shown such a disappointing performance this early. Facebook also slumped after its IPO and kept falling for several months, at one point dropping to less than half its IPO price. But Facebook's market value on its first trading day was about $100 billion, only one-fifth of the amount SpaceX has lost this time.

SpaceX will report its first post-IPO earnings after the market closes on Aug. 5. Its market value is about $1.4 trillion, but an assessment says current operating metrics are weak for supporting that level. Its price-to-sales ratio is in the 70-times range. It is burning several billion dollars each quarter, and debt is almost twice its cash.

A factor weighing on the stock is the end of the lockup period. As lockup restrictions begin to be lifted in stages within days, early investors will be able to sell shares for the first time. Short sellers are also making money from the decline. Matthew Unterman (매슈 언터먼), head of research at S3 Partners, said as of Friday that short sellers' mark-to-market profits were about $8.3 billion. Unterman said, "Among mega-cap stocks heading into their first earnings report after an IPO, I have hardly ever seen bearish positions build this aggressively and quickly."

Some brokerages view the recent decline as a buying opportunity. Ben Harwood (벤 하우드), an analyst at New Street Research, said the stock had been volatile since the IPO, but assessed the pullback as an attractive entry point for long-term investors. He added, "The growth potential is enormous, and SpaceX is one of the companies with the broadest economic moat in the market today." New Street Research set a pre-IPO target price of $165. SpaceX shares closed at $108.37 on Friday.

The biggest swing factor in the results is Starship. SpaceX believes the fully reusable next-generation rocket must succeed to cut launch costs and rapidly expand the Starlink satellite network and satellite communications business. These connected businesses are also the only profit-making operations at the company. Existing Falcon rockets made SpaceX the world's largest launch company, but the launch business itself is still loss-making.

In its prospectus, SpaceX said that if Starship fails to achieve full reusability or fast turnaround, it could lead to higher per-launch costs, delays in deploying large satellite constellations, slower revenue growth and increased capital needs. It also wrote that it expects Starship to begin sending payloads into orbit in the second half of this year. But in the 13th test flight conducted on July 24 at Starbase, Texas, the Super Heavy booster separated and splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico, but failed to complete a full splashdown as only some engines relit for the landing burn.

Bernstein analysts pointed to Starship as the most important variable for justifying SpaceX's corporate value. They also cited semiconductor supply, regulatory procedures and securing compute capacity as key issues to watch. They said, "The quarterly earnings numbers themselves will not matter," and added, "The key will be how much confidence management shows about the company's growth path." Bernstein set a target price of $239 with a buy rating.

The company's artificial intelligence strategy is also expected to be examined in the earnings. SpaceX has been pushing to build orbiting data centres and expand AI services after merging with Elon Musk's xAI in February. It is also pursuing the acquisition of AI coding startup Cursor, valued at $60 billion, and plans to finalise the deal in the third quarter after regulatory approval. The Grok chatbot won a U.S. Department of Defense contract, but its image-editing tool was misused to spread deepfake pornography, leaving it facing investigations and lawsuits in the United States and Europe.

The compute leasing business, which has emerged as a new revenue source, is also in focus. SpaceX is leasing excess compute capacity in its data centres to outside parties. Under a contract signed with Google before the IPO, it expects monthly revenue of $920 million. Anthropic agreed to use the entire capacity of the Memphis Colossus 1 data centre. It is also providing compute capacity to Reflection AI under a separate contract.

This new revenue source is also a basis for Cantor analysts to maintain an optimistic outlook. Cantor set a target price of $246 and said, "If the profitability of the hosted compute business is proven, the area for capital raising becomes clear, and early lockup-related burdens are eased, this earnings report could significantly alleviate the pressure factors seen so far." They added, "We think SpaceX shares are nearing a bottom ahead of this earnings release."