Key Takeaways
- Rocket Lab shares jumped 6% after Morgan Stanley kept its Overweight rating and trimmed its target to $103.
- Rocket Lab’s backlog rose $1.2 billion last quarter on new Neutron contracts at a $70 million base price.
- Firefly Aerospace and AST SpaceMobile rose too, after Firefly beat estimates and raised its outlook.
- The stock trades above its five-year average on forward sales, and a Neutron launch date is next to watch.
Rocket Lab (RKLB) stock jumped 6% today after Morgan Stanley analyst Kristine Liwag argued that its path to selling Neutron launches outweighs the “Q3 margin noise.” She kept her Overweight rating and a $103 target, down from $105.
Firefly Aerospace (FLY) gained 10% after beating estimates and raising its outlook after Tuesday’s close. AST SpaceMobile (ASTS), the customer behind Firefly’s biggest new deal, rose 10%.
Neutron’s order book is filling up
Liwag pointed to Rocket Lab’s “long-term drivers, including the clearer path to the commercialization” of Neutron, and Monday’s third-quarter report backs her up. Backlog reached $3.57 billion at Sept. 30, up $1.2 billion from June, helped by more than $515 million of new Neutron contracts. Several came at a $70 million base price, up from the $50 million-$55 million quoted before.
Analysts expect sales to keep climbing as Neutron arrives.
And after this quarter’s backlog jump, I don’t expect analysts to cut those numbers.
A rival gets more time
Firefly has the most to gain while Neutron waits. Its third-quarter revenue rose 259% to $110.7 million, its backlog hit a record $1.7 billion, and it now expects 2026 revenue of $440 million to $450 million. Still, it hasn’t set a date for Eclipse’s first launch either, and it burned $85.3 million of free cash flow in the quarter.
AST SpaceMobile’s contracts with Firefly are worth more than $1.3 billion and include engines for a rocket of its own. For Rocket Lab, that’s one more well-funded medium-lift rocket in the works, and one more reason Neutron’s timing matters.
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
Liwag has her priorities right
The margin did slip, to 33.6% from 37.0% a year earlier on TIKR’s figures, but that matters far less than Neutron’s growing order book.
The catch is the price: 32x forward sales at the last close, down from 89x in May but above its five-year average of 21x.
At today’s price, it’s even higher. And CEO Peter Beck won’t give a Neutron launch date until the first-stage tank passes all its tests, so I’d wait for one before buying more. If that date comes with fourth-quarter results early next year, today’s price could look like a bargain.
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!
