Yesterday afternoon, SpaceX (SPCX) reported its first earnings as a publicly traded company.
As expected, Wall Street immediately focused on the headlines.
Revenue came in at $7.8 billion compared to expectations of $6.8 billion. Earnings per share came in at a loss of -$0.09 versus estimates of -$0.23.
Just as important as the company’s first earnings report was an announcement that SpaceX and Nvidia (NVDA) are expanding a partnership to design the computing payload for its new satellite – Starmind A1. What makes this so interesting is that it brings data center computing capacity to space.
After the news the reaction was muted with an initial bounce that failed and about 10 minutes after the report the stock was near where it ended the regular trading session.
Those numbers matter.
But they aren’t what interested me most.
Whenever a transformational company reports earnings, I ask myself a much different question.
Did this report change my view of where the world is headed?
For SpaceX, my answer is simple.
No.
If anything, this report reinforced why we’re still in the early stages of one of the biggest innovation cycles of our lifetimes.
Look Beyond the Quarter
Public markets have a habit of turning every earnings report into a scorecard.
Did the company beat expectations? By how much? What happened to margins? What did management say about next quarter?
Those are all reasonable questions.
But they’re rarely the questions that determine whether a company creates enormous long-term shareholder value.
Think back to Amazon (AMZN) during its early years.
There were quarters when the stock plunged because profits disappointed investors. I remember vividly being on air and listening to the other talking heads about how Amazon will never make money… that take aged well.
There were quarters when Tesla (TSLA) missed delivery estimates. And similar to Amazon, I can remember being on stage with some well-known (albeit not very good) newsletter “gurus” that were calling for Tesla to go to zero!
Looking back, none of those quarterly headlines mattered very much. And more importantly, neither did the view of the mainstream financial media.
But the long-term trend did.
That doesn’t mean quarterly results are irrelevant.
It means investors should always ask whether short-term fluctuations have changed the long-term investment thesis.
In SpaceX’s case, they haven’t.
What I Was Really Watching
Rather than focusing solely on revenue or earnings, I was paying attention to several bigger-picture questions.
Is launch activity continuing to expand?
Is Starlink adding customers and increasing revenue?
Are commercial and government demand trends remaining strong?
Did management discuss future investment in Starship, satellite deployment, or next-generation infrastructure?
Those are the questions that matter over the next decade.
Innovation Doesn’t Pause
One reason I wanted to discuss SpaceX this week is because it’s easy to forget what investing in innovation actually looks like.
It isn’t smooth. It isn’t predictable. And it certainly isn’t comfortable.
The market has a tendency to judge revolutionary companies one quarter at a time.
History judges them over decades. That’s a much better perspective for long-term investors.
Whether the stock rallied or sold off after earnings doesn’t change the bigger picture.
The technologies reshaping our economy continue to advance.
Artificial intelligence is spreading into nearly every industry.
Robotics adoption is accelerating.
The electrification of our economy continues requiring enormous investments in infrastructure.
And commercial space is evolving into an industry that looks very different than it did just ten years ago.
But one of the more interesting developments surrounding SpaceX has nothing to do with its earnings.
SpaceX is now dedicating nearly 80% of its Falcon 9 launches to expanding its own Starlink satellite constellation, up from just over 50% a few years ago.
In other words, the company is increasingly using its launch capacity to grow its own business rather than carrying commercial payloads for outside customers.
That’s created an unexpected bottleneck across the commercial space industry. Some satellite operators have reportedly been told that Falcon 9 launch capacity is effectively sold out through 2028 or even 2029.
For investors, this creates both winners and losers. Companies that depend on third-party launches could face delays and higher costs, while competitors like Rocket Lab may benefit from growing demand for alternative launch providers.
More broadly, it reinforces my long-term view that the space economy is still in its early stages.
Roughly 50 satellites are already launched into space every week, but demand for access to orbit is growing faster than supply, and that should create opportunities not only for launch companies, but also for businesses involved in satellites, communications infrastructure, space manufacturing, and other critical parts of the industry’s value chain.
Seems like we’re going to keep chucking tons of metal into the atmosphere every day… but hey, innovation keeps moving forward whether we’re excited about it or not.
Looking Ahead
Tomorrow, another milestone arrives as the first major lockup expiration allows approximately 911 million insider and employee shares to become eligible for sale.
I’ll be watching how the market reacts. Not because I believe insider selling determines a company’s future, but because moments like these often tell us more about investor psychology than they do about the underlying business.
Sometimes the biggest opportunities appear when everyone else is focused on the wrong thing.
Here’s to the future,
Matt McCall
Editor, Market Insights
