Should you buy shares in SpaceX? Experts reveal what they predict for the stock

It’s the biggest stock market float in history – and one that is set to mint the world’s first trillionaire.

We will find out just how much Elon Musk and his SpaceX rockets-to-chatbots enterprise venture are worth thanks to trading in the much-hyped shares beginning this afternoon in New York.

Early trading information shows the shares, priced at $135 each had jumped to $160. This comes after the offer was heavily oversubscribed, meaning demand for the shares far outweighed supply.

But how will they fare in the days, weeks and months ahead? Can they continue to defy gravity?

Musk is Marmite. Few people divide opinion as much as the soon-to-be trillionaire tech tycoon.

So it is hardly surprising experts have split views on the eagerly anticipated stock market launch.

Fans say the $1.75trillion blockbuster flotation – the biggest ever – is a once-in-a-generation chance for armchair savers to climb aboard what promises to be the investment ride of a lifetime to the Moon, Mars and beyond.

They have been allocated up to 30pc of the shares on offer – an unusually large amount to be set aside for retail investors in an initial public offering (IPO) – after ordering more than $100billion of SpaceX stock, according to Bloomberg.

It means many investors will get only a fraction of the shares they bid for as the bulk of the $75billion on offer is earmarked for institutional investors such as investment banks, wealth managers and pension funds.

British stock pickers are piling in, with one in five of them saying they will invest in SpaceX early, according to a survey by market research firm Opinium.

But as our poll of experts, below, shows, there are plenty of sceptics.

Many of them think the SpaceX IPO is the frothy top of an artificial intelligence (AI) investment frenzy that will surely see the gravity-defying shares crash back to Earth – just as the dotcom boom soon turned to bust a quarter of a century ago.

One thing is certain. By any conventional measures, SpaceX is expensive.

It cannot be valued on its current earnings, because there aren’t any.

SpaceX is loss-making – and is likely to remain so for some time while it uses the money raised in the flotation to build huge, cash-hungry data centres, both here and potentially in orbit, to power the AI revolution.

The IPO price tag of $135 a share values SpaceX at almost 100 times its current sales.

That’s sales, not profits.

While it is not unusual for tech companies to go public while losing money, it is worth putting that astonishing multiple into some sort of context.

When an already highly profitable Facebook floated in 2012 its shares were offered at a chunky 100 times earnings.

After an initial spike, the shares soon halved in value as investors queried the business model of the social media platform, since renamed Meta. The rest, as they say, is history.

Today Meta is one of the so-called Magnificent 7, one of the world’s biggest companies worth $1.5trillion, alongside Musk’s Tesla electric cars venture. If you had invested £1,000 in the Facebook float in 2012, it would now be worth nearly £15,000 today.

SpaceX is set to join their ranks, overtaking both Meta and Tesla in the process.

Whether it stays there will be decided by an epic tug-of-war about to play out between bulls and bears of the stock market.

It promises to be some spectacle but definitely not one for the faint-hearted – or anyone who does not want to risk losing money.

Musk fans allocated shares in the IPO may want to flip them for a quick profit – known as ‘stagging’ in the industry – by selling some or all their holding if the price soars above the $135 float price.

For everyone else, perhaps the safest option is to watch from the sidelines, see if history repeats itself and hope you can buy in later at a lower price.

BUY, SELL, FLIP FOR A PROFIT OR AVOID: WHAT THE EXPERTS SAY

BUY

Pierre Ferragu, analyst at New Street Research

We expect the shares to hit $165 within 12 months of the IPO, reflecting 22pc upside and a valuation of $2.3trillion when accounting for the group’s proposed acquisition of code-editing firm Cursor.

The space opportunity is large and diversified and will play out over more than a decade.

Based on our low-end market growth assumptions, our valuation assumes [SpaceX] wins 75 pc of this market.

If [...] the whole opportunity grows to our high-end estimate and SpaceX wins 50pc share, it would imply a fair value of $330 a share.

BUY

Garry White, chief investment commentator, Charles Stanley

For investors with a very optimistic view of SpaceX’s mission to build the systems and technologies necessary to make life multiplanetary, including developing a significant orbital data centre business, we believe there may still be some upside to the IPO price. This case requires SpaceX to continue executing at a level very few companies have ever achieved.

For investors who are positive on the long‑term outlook but want a margin of safety around these more speculative areas, patience may be warranted, with a more attractive entry point emerging closer to $100 a share.

This would offer a better balance between the proven value of the Space and Connectivity (Starlink) businesses and the optionality of AI and orbital data centre opportunities.

For those more sceptical about SpaceX’s ability to deliver on its most ambitious targets, the IPO valuation looks difficult to justify, and a materially lower entry point, potentially below $70 a share, may be required before the risk‑reward balance becomes compelling.

BUY

Dan Ives, managing director at US investment group Wedbush

Many bet against Musk and Tesla a decade ago and that did not go well for the bears... Any investor buying SpaceX is also betting on Musk this time.

Overall, SpaceX going public is an important moment for the broader tech sector in our view as this AI Revolution and data takes this next step forward.

At the end of the day Musk is SpaceX and SpaceX is Musk, but the broader ramifications of this IPO are important for the market and the overall tech trade.

While there will be some worries that the mammoth SpaceX will take away some oxygen from the tech/semi(conductor) trade as investors rotate into SpaceX, we believe this will be a short-term bump in the road as the market adjusts to this new tech titan as a public company.

We continue to believe that SpaceX and Tesla will eventually merge (higher than 80pc chance in our view) into one company in 2027, with the groundwork already in place for both operations to become one organization.

Musk wants to own and control more of the AI ecosystem and step by step the holy grail could be combining SpaceX and Tesla in some way to give the connected tissue between both disruptive tech stalwarts looking to lead the AI revolution in this next tech chapter for the market.

SELL FOR A PROFIT

Joachim Klement, managing director and strategist at Panmure Liberum

I am confident the stock will do well in the first couple of weeks after the IPO. The IPO is (almost) four times oversubscribed. This isn’t a surprise when supply is so severely constrained as it is in this case – the free float is going to be less than 5pc of the company’s market value.

Yet, the retail share in the IPO has been increased from the usual 10pc to up to 30pc which tells you a lot about how institutional investors view the opportunity and how low demand is for the stock among professional investors.

And 15 days after the IPO an estimated $7billion will flow into a stock with a free float of $70billion since Nasdaq changed its index rules and every Nasdaq index tracker will be forced to buy the stocks.

In short, SpaceX did everything it could to make sure the shares will do well in the first two to three weeks after the IPO, but after this initial honeymoon period is over, nobody knows what is going to happen to that stock.

SELL FOR A PROFIT

Susannah Streeter, chief investment strategist, Wealth Club

With all the hype surrounding Elon Musk’s extra-terrestrial ambitions, SpaceX shares look set to pop when they start trading.

The offer was reportedly four times over-subscribed, and there will be disappointed investors who missed out on an allocation who are keen to buy into a slice of the action.

So initially the price will be driven by hype, and scarcity rather than anything fundamental. The expected listing price is around $135 per share, giving SpaceX an eye-watering valuation of roughly $1.75trillion. So, a lot of expected future success has already been priced in and you would have to be a very optimistic investor to expect the share price to keep rising.

SpaceX's ambitions are stratospheric and potentially transformative, but they are also highly capital-intensive and dependent on technological breakthroughs and regulatory approvals.

Investors will need to balance the excitement of the Musk's vision against the realities of operating in this risky new frontier.

The coming weeks are likely to see volatility hit the stock, which often happens post a listing – and is highly likely given the mega valuation.

For investors who are still interested, it would be worth waiting until the froth has been blown away, before taking the plunge.

Given the turbulence expected and concerns about the risks that could be ahead for Elon Musk’s ambitions in the space domain, investors should only moonwalk into this opportunity with high caution and a well-diversified portfolio.

SELL FOR A PROFIT

Jason Hollands, managing director, Bestinvest

The combination of a limited free float, the offer being oversubscribed and a wall of cash from index funds expected to scramble to buy the shares once trading commences irrespective of the price they will have to pay, I can see the prospect of the shares rallying hard in the short term and the valuation becoming even more extreme.

Nasdaq, FTSE Russell and MSCI are all expected to incorporate the company into some of their indices. According to Bloomberg, Intropic, a provider of index-rebalancing forecasts, estimates that passive funds will ultimately own around 30pc of SpaceX's relatively limited free float.

This suggests compulsory buying by index-tracking funds could provide a further boost to the share price in the near term, despite the company already seeking a very rich valuation.

Whether such lofty valuations can be sustained once lock-up periods expire for insiders and they are free to sell their holdings – typically after six months – is another matter entirely.

If my hunch is right and the price soars in the near term as index funds wade in, investors who took a punt on the IPO might want to bank some early profits, as there is quite a pipeline of significant AI-related equity issuance coming up and some of the volatility we’ve seen in US stocks in recent days may well reflect investors selling down other holdings to free up cash to invest in these blockbuster IPOs.

HOLD FIRE

Michael Field, chief equity strategist at Morningstar

We believe it's overvalued. Investors should sit this one out and wait for a more attractive entry point down the line.

The business has real strengths, particularly in Starlink, but with so many unknown and untested technologies underpinning much of the valuation price, particularly within the AI business, we think the valuation is extremely speculative.

AVOID

Stephen Yiu, lead manager of Blue Whale Growth Fund

From the outset, we will sit on the sidelines of the SpaceX IPO. While Starlink is probably the most exciting business outside the recent AI trade, a big part of the valuation is xAI, which is in the most competitive landscape ever.

Given a choice, we’d be more interested in Starlink, as there are better alternatives to xAI in the publicly listed domain such as Nvidia, Vertiv and Hynix.

In addition, to make money from SpaceX, you would need to consider the price you pay for the company fundamentals and the duration of the loss-making nature of the business over the next few years before it achieves economies of scale.

Lastly, for SpaceX to be successful in the long run, it’s likely that post-IPO they would need to raise further capital to sustain growth, hence there will be more share issues over time.

At Blue Whale, we very much prefer ’a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush’ – in this case, we would rather pay a reasonable price for highly profitable companies today than pay a significant premium on the ‘hope’ that they will prove to be profitable.

The only exception is the Elon Musk X-factor, which we will let other investors decide how much of a premium he carries.

AVOID

David Coombs, multi-asset fund manager at Rathbones Asset Management:

SpaceX is undoubtedly one of the most innovative companies of our generation, but extraordinary businesses are not attractive investments at any price. The company is overvalued at any metric. Markets can remain enthusiastic for some time, but eventually valuations matter.

Starlink, the internet service, is an exceptional asset boasting more than ten million subscribers. But xAI, the artificial intelligence division of SpaceX, is burning through cash like a rocket burns fuel.

We prefer businesses in the space economy – which extends beyond rockets and satellites – with sustainable revenues and cash flow.

AVOID

Ed Croft, CEO Stockopedia.com

SpaceX is, plausibly, the finest engineering company of its generation. The published numbers on the operating business are really rather impressive.

Starlink (its low-Earth-orbit satellites business) booked more than $11billion in revenue in 2025, up 50pc year on year, with operating income of nearly $4.5billion growing 120pc. That's a seriously profitable, fast-growing segment with more than ten million subscribers and a 63pc margin.

Its space (rockets/launch) business is a near-monopoly: more than 80pc of all global mass to orbit since 2023, and more than 99pc Falcon mission success rate, and roughly 9,600 satellites making up three-quarters of manoeuvrable satellites in orbit. No other company is close.

We can’t deny the growth here. The problem is the price.

It is reported Goldman Sachs – a lead underwriter – shared potential forecasts with investors that have SpaceX’s AI revenue growing roughly 100 times, from about $3.2billion in 2025 to about $322billion by 2030.

So there it is – the $1.75trillion valuation rests on an assumption that a unit which lost $6.4billion last year, and rents capacity to rival Anthropic because its own Grok (chatbot) hasn’t gained traction, will outgrow the entire history of corporate America – while commercialising space-based data centres.

Of course, SpaceX can and will grow. But the argument is that the price already assumes it grows faster than any company ever has, in the one segment where it’s struggling. And of course, Goldman earns fees proportional to whatever raises in the IPO. As author and former stockbroker Fred Schwed once said… ’Where are the customer’s yachts?’