SpaceX wins wild praise, with one analyst going so far as to predict a 400% stock surge

By William Gavin

Analysts are cheering major upside potential for SpaceX, with one calling the company the 'apex of civilizational ambition'

SpaceX's Starship will enable "access to trillion-dollar markets that no other company can realistically tap into," according to Citi.

Many Wall Street analysts just became free to publish investment recommendations on SpaceX, and they largely offered glowing praise of the company and its goals.

"SpaceX (SPCX) represents in our view the apex of civilizational ambition, oftentimes expressed in steel and fire, bending the arc of history to make humans multiplanetary," Deutsche Bank's Edison Yu wrote in a client note on Tuesday, rating the stock at buy with a price target of $255 per share.

Similarly, J.P. Morgan analysts led by Doug Anmuth called SpaceX's "potential impact on humanity" larger than anything they've seen before from a company. The firm has an overweight rating and a $225-per-share price target on SpaceX.

And Raymond James's Brian Gesuale weighed in with an $800-per-share price target, which is easily the highest on Wall Street and would require shares to essentially quintuple from current levels. "Just as railroads, electric grids, and the Internet reshaped prior economic eras, we believe SpaceX is building the foundational platform for the next generation of industrial capacity," he wrote.

Many analysts had been prevented from launching coverage of SpaceX until now due to rules that require banks to wait before issuing recommendations on initial public offerings that they work on. Nearly two dozen firms were involved in SpaceX's "historic IPO," which helped fund a planned "cosmic disruption of traditional telecom and [artificial-intelligence] infrastructure," as William Blair's Louie DiPalma put it in a client note.

The average price target for SpaceX comes out to $220 a share, according to estimates compiled by FactSet. That implies a roughly 38% increase from Monday's closing price, which valued the company at more than $2 trillion.

SpaceX's stock dipped 4.7% on Tuesday. The Nasdaq 100 NDX added SpaceX to its ranks on Tuesday, the latest index to do so. That will force passive funds tracking the index to add SpaceX to its portfolio.

Now read: The Nasdaq-100 has been far more volatile than the S&P 500. Now add SpaceX to the mix.

Price targets run the gamut, and not all of them imply extreme upside potential. Stifel, for one, has a $190 target and a buy rating on the stock.

Others have taken the opposite approach. Morgan Stanley's Adam Jonas, a longtime fan of SpaceX and Tesla (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk, initiated coverage with a $300 price target. But he also offered a bearish scenario that would see SpaceX shares trade as low as $75, along with a bull-case view that would see it climb as high as $600, which Jonas said balances SpaceX's "unique ability" against the risks.

SpaceX has big dreams, including colonizing Mars, operating orbital data centers and putting a mass driver on the moon that would make it easier to put satellites in orbit. Executing upon them relies on still-unproven technology. Success will likely require a lot of capital spending and the ability to push through supply constraints, J.P. Morgan's Anmuth said.

Several analysts expect it to take until at least 2031 for SpaceX to be free-cash-flow positive. Capital expenditures will reach $245 billion in 2030, Bernstein forecast.

And the company's plans are reliant on improvements to the Starship mega-rocket, which is still undergoing testing. The next launch of the vehicle is expected later this month, marking the second test of SpaceX's latest design.

Any delays or setbacks to Starship could impede planned growth across SpaceX's businesses, analysts say, and those represent a very real possibility. As Stifel's Jonathan Siegmann notes, "It's conventional wisdom that SpaceX timelines always slip."

However, if SpaceX can pull it off, Starship will enable "access to trillion-dollar markets that no other company can realistically tap into," Citi's John Godyn said in a note. He rates SpaceX's stock a buy with a $200 target price, which he called a milestone along the road to a longer-term $900 target.

Still, there are analysts skeptical of SpaceX. At least four firms rate the stock at hold, according to FactSet, while a few more rate it at the equivalent of sell.

MoffettNathanson analysts on Tuesday initiated coverage with a $131 price target, slightly below SpaceX's IPO price, along with a neutral rating, citing the complexity of the company. Despite there being "plenty to poke fun at," they note that it's tough to dismiss SpaceX given its track record and the potential payoff of its plans.

-William Gavin

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07-07-26 1016ET