Key Takeaways
- Rocket Lab shares fell 4% after Democrats swept Tuesday’s midterms and the backlash against Elon Musk spread across space stocks.
- AST SpaceMobile and Planet Labs fell with SpaceX, though Rocket Lab is a SpaceX rival.
- Analysts expect Rocket Lab’s revenue to nearly triple from 2025 to 2028, and the election doesn’t change that.
- The bigger test is Rocket Lab’s Nov. 9 report, where investors want a Neutron launch date.
Rocket Lab (RKLB) fell 4% today as the backlash against Elon Musk after Tuesday’s Democratic sweep hit SpaceX (SPCX) and spilled across space stocks.
SpaceX fell 4% on worries that a Democratic Congress will dig into Musk’s federal contracts. AST SpaceMobile (ASTS) dropped 4%, and Planet Labs (PL) fell 6%.
George Noble, who is short SpaceX and Tesla, summed up the mood on X: “Elon Musk is the biggest loser in the elections tonight.”
Rocket Lab is a SpaceX rival
That makes Rocket Lab an odd stock to dump: it competes with SpaceX for launches and government work, which a Congress leaning on Musk’s contracts could send its way.
And second-quarter revenue rose 62% from a year earlier to $234.1 million.
Analysts expect revenue to climb from $602 million in 2025 to $1.74 billion in 2028:
Nothing in Tuesday’s results gives them a reason to cut those numbers.
TIKR tracks 22 analysts on Rocket Lab. How many say “Buy”?
See the full breakdown of Buy, Hold, and Sell ratings on Rocket Lab, along with Wall Street’s revenue and earnings estimates, all in one place. More than 500,000 investors use TIKR to research stocks like this one. See Rocket Lab’s Analyst Ratings
AST and Planet face different questions
AST SpaceMobile buys launches from SpaceX and competes with Starlink for phone service, and today SpaceX signed a Qualcomm deal for Starlink Mobile. In August, AST said it was on track for $150 million to $200 million of 2026 revenue. It also reports Nov. 9: can it date its next BlueBird launches?
Planet faces a different worry: government budgets. Its revenue rose 58% to $116.1 million in the quarter ended July 31, and in August it won awards from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and the German government. Does that keep coming under the new Congress’s first budget?
Nov. 9 matters more than Tuesday
Rocket Lab reports third-quarter results after the close on Monday, Nov. 9, and investors want a date: Neutron’s first launch slipped into 2027 on Oct. 14, and the company didn’t give one.
And the stock isn’t cheap. It traded at 28x forward sales at the last close (a bit less after today’s drop), against a five-year average of 21x:
Bottom line: the midterms don’t change Rocket Lab’s business, and a tougher Congress for Musk could even help it.
Of course, Rocket Lab isn’t immune to Washington: one government customer was 42% of its first-half revenue.
So what is Rocket Lab 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!
