SpaceX gains 6% in premarket after record debut. Heres whats driving the valuation debate

SpaceX shares jumped in premarket trading on Monday following its record-breaking debut last week on the Nasdaq, which marked the biggest initial public offering in history.

Shares of SpaceX were around 6% higher at the start of premarket trading, hovering around the $170 mark.

SpaceX jumped 19% on Friday with the stock closing at $161 after being priced at $135 per share. That put the company’s market capitalization above $2 trillion.

Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, posted on X on Sunday that the company “might be able to reach approximately” $1 trillion revenue in 2030.

“And I would be surprised if revenue is not greater than $1T in 2031,” Musk added in a follow-up post.

SpaceX reported $18.7 billion in revenue in 2025.

Musk’s space company operates the Starlink satellite internet service and a fleet of reusable rockets. In February, Musk merged the company with his artificial intelligence startup xAI. SpaceX lost nearly $5 billion in 2025 and the blockbuster IPO has sparked debate over whether the company’s huge valuation is justified.

CFRA on Friday initiated coverage of the stock with a “sell” rating and a 12-month price target of $115, which is a nearly 29% drop from Friday’s closing price. CFRA said its view was “due to the company’s extremely ambitious growth strategy, elevated valuation expectations, and significant capital intensity.”

SpaceX’s capital expenditures in the three months ended March totaled $10.1 billion versus $4.1 billion in the same period last year. The majority of that went toward artificial intelligence.

Morningstar analyst Nicolas Owens released a note on June 8, in which he said the firm values SpaceX at $63 per share, and described the stock as “overvalued.”

Paulina Roszkowska, lecturer in finance at Bayes Business School, told CNBC’s “Europe Early Edition” that SpaceX has made “a lot of promises,” but at some point that will need to turn into cash flow.

“Aside [from] those phrases about data centers in the orbit, which are high promises, if you are asking for 70, 80 billion contribution, I think that you owe investors a little bit more than poetry,” Roszkowska said.

The IPO prospectus lacks details on governance or execution risks, she said. “So I am wondering what are these promises based on,” Roszkowska said.

However, other analysts are more bullish on the stock. NewStreet Research initiated coverage of SpaceX with a $165 price target.

“Can you look [at] this business, let’s say, over a longer time frame than you would over most equities to justify to get to the current valuation? We think you can,” James Ratzer, partner and senior analyst at NewStreet Research, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Monday.

“But we think you have to be looking out over a kind of 20 to 25-year time frame. I think a lot of the building blocks are in place to succeed, but it is definitely a much longer-dated equity story than most.”

Ratzer said SpaceX has “at least a 10-year lead” over competitors when it comes to its rocket launch capabilities.

“When you look at SpaceX and driving what’s needed to succeed on Starlink on direct-to-cell … orbital data centres, everything has to hinge back to success on launch, and you look at what they’re building with Starship, the advantage they will have with that, the mass they can put into orbit is a huge advantage,” Ratzer told CNBC.

Starship is SpaceX’s latest generation launch vehicle. Orbital data centers refer to SpaceX’s plans to build data centers in space for AI.

“We think, for example, in just over the next four to five years, he [Musk] will still have about 90 to 95% of all launch capacity that’s going on in space,” Ratzer said.