David Einhorn and Morgan Stanley are looking at the same Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (NASDAQ:SPCX) and arriving at almost opposite conclusions. Einhorn’s Greenlight Capital called SpaceX’s $1.75 trillion IPO valuation a marker that a speculative top may be near. Morgan Stanley’s Adam Jonas now says the post-IPO decline has created a “unique opportunity” and carries a $300 price target.
The timing makes the disagreement more useful than a generic valuation debate. SpaceX went public on June 12 at $135 a share and raised roughly $75 billion before the underwriters’ option. Its first public quarterly results then showed $7.8 billion of revenue but also a $541 million net loss and about $18.4 billion of capital spending as the company pushes simultaneously into rockets, Starlink and AI infrastructure. The stock subsequently fell well below its post-IPO highs. A large lockup release also increased the supply of tradable shares, making it harder to separate fundamental skepticism from the mechanical pressure that often follows a mega-IPO.
Einhorn’s concern is essentially that investors are paying venture-style prices for a company with negative free cash flow and enormous future capital needs. In Greenlight’s Q2 letter, he questioned the optimism embedded in long-range revenue forecasts and the mechanics of an IPO that put a relatively small portion of the company into public hands. That is a legitimate issue when a thin float and index demand can amplify price moves.
Morgan Stanley sees the spending differently. Jonas argues Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (NASDAQ:SPCX) can justify a much larger valuation as launch, connectivity and enterprise AI scale together. His latest bull case points to the company’s planned $100 billion Starbase facility in Louisiana and models rapid sales and EBIT growth through fiscal 2028. The $300 target implies more than 100% upside from the price used in the firm’s analysis.
SpaceX is, of course, too new to have a comparable Q1 hedge-fund holder count in Insider Monkey’s database, but in Q2, 119 hedge funds held the stock. Short interest as of August 14 settlement was about 184.4 million shares. The real divide is not whether SpaceX can grow. It is whether even extraordinary growth can outrun a valuation and spending plan already built for extraordinary outcomes.
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