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Key Takeaways
- SpaceX’s third-quarter revenue beat analysts’ estimates by $1.9 billion, and Morningstar raised its fair value to $70 from $62, which is less than half the stock’s $147.79 close on Oct. 20.
- Morningstar’s number already looks out of date next to SpaceX’s new guidance. Even so, the stock needs analysts’ estimates to keep rising.
- At that close, SpaceX traded at 66x Wall Street’s 2027 EPS estimate of $2.25 and 30x its 2028 estimate of $4.89.
- The test to watch is whether SpaceX delivers the $33 billion to $37 billion of first-quarter 2027 revenue it guided to.
SpaceX (SPCX) just reported a quarter that blew past Wall Street’s numbers, and the stock is up 9% this morning.
Morningstar’s response? It raised its fair value to $70 a share from $62. That’s still less than half of Tuesday’s $147.79 close.
JPMorgan’s Doug Anmuth went the other way. He raised his target to $500 from $240 this morning, more than three times that close. How far apart those two numbers are depends on how much you believe Elon Musk’s AI targets.
A blowout quarter
Here’s what SpaceX reported for the third quarter:
- Revenue of $14.6 billion, up 161% from $5.6 billion, against the $12.72 billion analysts expected, according to LSEG
- Net income of $4.4 billion, up from a $1.1 billion loss a year earlier
- Adjusted EBITDA of $8.8 billion, up 306%
- Super Intelligence revenue of $7.6 billion, up $5 billion from the second quarter
Super Intelligence, SpaceX’s AI business, accounted for $6.7 billion of the $9 billion revenue increase from a year earlier. Connectivity grew 69% to $5.2 billion, and Space grew just 6% to $1.8 billion.
That AI growth is what moved Morningstar. Analyst Nicolas Owens raised the fair value because SpaceX’s data centers scaled up faster than the firm expected. Morningstar’s note calls the AI buildout a success story but keeps the stock at one star, still significantly overvalued.
TIKR tracks 38 analysts on SpaceX. How many say “Buy”?
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Morningstar has been the low number all along
Morningstar has had the lowest number on SpaceX since the June IPO. It set a $63 fair value at the listing and cut it to $62 after SpaceX’s $60 billion Cursor deal. It kept $62 after the second quarter, when the stock traded around twice that.
Most of the Street has been far more bullish. JPMorgan’s $500, Morgan Stanley’s $300 and Goldman Sachs’ $245 targets are all more than three times Morningstar’s $70.
So a quarter in which the AI business added $5 billion of revenue in three months raised Morningstar’s number by only $8.
What the stock is paying for
Analysts’ earnings estimates are still small next to the price. Consensus calls for normalized EPS of $2.25 in 2027 and $4.89 in 2028.
Those estimates may not include Tuesday’s guidance yet, and I’d expect them to rise. SpaceX guided to $33 billion to $37 billion of revenue for the first quarter of 2027. Even the low end, run for four quarters, matches the $132.4 billion analysts expect for all of 2027.
At Tuesday’s close, SpaceX traded at 66x the 2027 estimate and 30x the 2028 one, and today’s jump pushes those higher. On the same math, Morningstar’s $70 is 14x 2028 earnings, while JPMorgan’s $500 target works out to 222x 2027’s consensus EPS. Here’s SpaceX’s forward P/E since the June listing.
Musk’s targets carry the rest of the price. On Tuesday’s call, he said “what this implies for SpaceX annual recurring revenue by the end of ’27 is somewhere between $500 billion and $1 trillion.”
The low end of that range is double the $249.4 billion analysts expect SpaceX to bring in during all of 2028. The bulls already model far above consensus: Morgan Stanley’s new 2028 EPS estimate of $9.45 is nearly double it.
Getting there won’t be cheap. Analysts expect SpaceX to burn $61.2 billion of free cash flow in 2026, $110.4 billion in 2027 and $65.7 billion in 2028. Morningstar’s own doubt is about demand: “we do not think it likely that demand will outstrip supply forever, especially the more capacity is deployed.”
The guidance is the next test
That’s why Morningstar still puts SpaceX at less than half its price. Its $70 assumes the race for computing capacity cools as more of it comes online, while the stock price assumes Musk’s targets come true.
My take: Morningstar’s number already looks out of date next to Tuesday’s guidance, and I’d expect analysts to raise their estimates toward it. But at 66x 2027 earnings, the stock needs those estimates to keep climbing for a while yet.
Of course, the fourth-quarter report, due early next year, will be the first sign of whether SpaceX is on pace for that $33 billion to $37 billion first quarter.
So what is SpaceX stock actually worth?
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Disclaimer:
Please note that the articles on TIKR are not intended to serve as investment or financial advice from TIKR or our content team, nor are they recommendations to buy or sell any stocks. We create our content based on TIKR Terminal’s investment data and analysts’ estimates. Our analysis might not include recent company news or important updates. TIKR has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading, and happy investing!
