SpaceX is banking on a successful Starship launch to stem the stock's bleeding

By William Gavin

The newest timeline has Starship due to take flight on Friday

SpaceX's Starship rocket launch has faced a number of delays.

SpaceX shares are headed for their ninth down day in the past 11 sessions as delays with the Starship rocket weigh on investor sentiment.

The aerospace company had initially planned for Starship to return to flight a week ago, less than a month after the rocket's 12th test. But it was forced to abort the test after facing issues with its engines.

SpaceX (SPCX) then planned to launch the rocket as soon as Monday, before pushing the date back to Thursday. Then, late on Thursday, it postponed the test until Friday evening, citing weather-related issues.

"Visibility is forecast to be ideal for a Friday attempt," SpaceX said in a post on X. The 90-minute launch window opens at 6:45 p.m. Eastern time.

A main goal of Friday's test will be to get clearer imagery of Starship's heat shield as it flies at a higher dynamic pressure during its ascent, SpaceX said. It also plans to deploy 20 V3 Starlink satellites, which will attempt to connect to the broader satellite constellation before burning up on re-entry.

"Each Starship launch is so important - they're validating a number of milestones each launch and they need to check each box to move on to the next milestones in the next launch," KeyBanc analyst Michael Leshock told MarketWatch over email.

SpaceX shares were down more than 4% in midday trading on Friday, adding to recent declines. They're currently trading at around $113, or 16% below SpaceX's initial public offering price. SpaceX had traded as high as $225.64 a share last month before the pullback.

Part of the decline stems from the delays with Starship, which provides the foundation for many of SpaceX's plans. Without ramping up the currently unproven reusable rocket, the company will find it much more difficult to launch larger, more advanced Starlink satellites or orbital data centers at scale.

"Given the high-profile nature of the event and Starship's importance to the company's long-term plans, we could see the stock move, with the direction depending on the outcome of the test," J.P. Morgan analyst Seth Seifman said in a note ahead of last week's planned test.

And SpaceX appears to be going all in on Starship, to the extent that it seems to be moving away from its partially reusable Falcon 9 rocket, which helped it revolutionize the launch industry.

SpaceX has stopped building some components for the Falcon rocket family and is rejecting customers who want to buy Falcon 9 missions after 2028, according to Bloomberg. SpaceNews also reported last month that SpaceX is not accepting Transporter ride-share mission reservations beyond late 2028 or early 2029.

SpaceX has said in filings that it expects launches of the Falcon 9, the "most active orbital launch vehicle on the market," to decline as Starship comes to fruition. An early retirement would likely worsen the already strained balance of launch supply and demand.

KeyBanc analysts on Thursday said that demand and supply won't be balanced until 2032, with the accumulated backlog of launches over that time likely left unfulfilled until 2037. That analysis, though, counts on Falcon 9 being active at least through 2033 and scaling from other launch firms, such as Rocket Lab (RKLB).

Leshock told MarketWatch that retiring Falcon 9 within the next couple of years could extend the launch backlog while widening the supply and demand imbalance until mid-2030. However, he added that the rocket's "inevitable" retirement is based on Starship progress.

"We find it unlikely that Falcon 9 would retire until Starship is ramping launch cadence to a meaningful capacity to replace or meaningfully supplement [SpaceX's] internal launch demand needs," the analyst said over email. He rates SpaceX shares at sector-weight.

-William Gavin

This content was created by MarketWatch, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. MarketWatch is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

07-24-26 1317ET