SpaceX reports second quarter results after the close of trading on Wednesday, Aug. 4. It's going to be wild.
The reasons are fairly obvious. It's a $1.4 trillion company, which was a $3 trillion company only a few weeks ago, valued at 35 times estimated 2026 sales, led by the world's richest human, Elon Musk. Investors need to be ready for what the company might say and for some volatile trading in SpaceX stock on Thursday and Friday.
The "initial quarter likely suffers from an extreme estimate skew," wrote Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Colin Canfield in a preview report. That might be a nice way of saying that no one really knows what to expect. The numbers could be all over the place.
SpaceX reports in three segments: Space, Connectivity, and AI. The space business is the company's impressive launch franchise, currently working to ready the huge Starship rocket for commercial service. Connectivity is Starlink, which had more than 10 million customers at the end of the first quarter. The AI business is essentially xAI, which SpaceX merged with in February. xAI has two terrestrial data centers: Colossus I in Tennessee and Colossus II in Mississippi.
The AI business generated first-quarter 2026 revenue of $818 million and an operating loss of $2.5 billion. Capital spending in the quarter amounted to $7.7 billion.
Those are the three numbers to watch. SpaceX signed AI data center rental agreements with Anthropic and Google. The Google agreement hasn't started yet. The Anthropic agreement, valued at $1.25 billion a month, was ramping up in May and June. Exactly how much revenue was generated is hard to say. So is predicting the margin or pace of new AI spending.
Investors will likely be looking for guidance from the company on the AI outlook for the rest of the year and into 2027, and on when SpaceX plans to start testing its idea to put low-cost AI computing satellites into orbit using Starship.
Starship completed its 13th flight test in July. Investors will be looking for an update on test number 14 and on how much the company is spending on the rocket. SpaceX spent $1.1 billion on new plants and equipment in its space division in the first quarter.
That division also generated sales of $4.1 billion and an operating loss of $657 million. SpaceX launched its Falcon 9 rocket about three dozen times in the second quarter. Most launches were for its Starlink business. Those launches aren't revenue for the Space segment. Investors will have to wait to see how volatile sales and earnings are in that segment, although they are likely to be far more focused on AI and Starlink results.
As for Starlink, it ended the first quarter with 10.3 million subscribers, up from five million 12 months before that. It generated $11.4 billion in revenue and $4.4 billion in operating income.
Investors will want to see subscriber growth. Canfield expects SpaceX to provide revenue-per-user metrics and the backlog for the Starlink enterprise and government businesses.
He expects a solid quarter with better-than-expected earnings guidance. Overall, Wall Street expects revenue of $6.9 billion and earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, or Ebitda, of $2.1 billion. For the full year, Wall Street projects sales of $39 billion and Ebitda of $17.3 billion.
Those are some of the benchmarks to watch for. Whether Wall Street got close is anyone's guess. Investors also can't be sure how shares will trade after earnings are reported.
SpaceX stock has been weak, entering Monday trading down 46% from the all-time closing high of $201.80 reached on June 16, days after the record-setting IPO. One of the problems has been the potential wave of selling by early investors, who will soon be allowed to sell shares.
About 912 million shares of stock become available to trade on Aug. 6 and another 319 million shares about a week later. That could mean more selling pressure, but the stock market is forward-looking. Stocks tend to react before known things happen, not after.
Who knows, this could be the week SpaceX stock rises after a painful four-week losing streak. That, of course, will depend on a strong earnings report.
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