Orbit Alpha Issue 18 · 16 Aug 2026
Five earnings reports fell on the print this week. The stock that fell hardest last week was the only one that gained. VanEck JEDI Fund Dive.
MARKET OVERVIEW
🌎 Five earnings reports fell on the print this week. The stock that fell hardest last week was the only one that gained. VanEck JEDI Fund Dive.
Track every space stock live at Orbit Alpha
Rocket Lab posted record revenue and a record backlog and fell anyway. AST SpaceMobile beat on revenue and watched five banks move five price targets in five different directions inside of twenty-four hours. Intuitive Machines nearly quadrupled its revenue year over year and dropped double digits before lunch. Virgin Galactic trimmed its loss and oversold its next batch of tickets, then told investors its first commercial flight had slipped to February and its cash could fall toward $65 million by year-end. Spire Global beat on the bottom line and reaffirmed guidance and still closed lower on the day. Five earnings reports, five stocks down on the print.
The exception was SpaceX, still absorbing the fallout from its first lockup expiration the prior week, which continued rallying through this week's session and gained roughly a fifth of its value. That's the mirror image of two weeks ago, when SpaceX fell and the rest of the group rallied 28 to 54% around it. With earnings season now mostly behind the sector, investors are pricing execution, not sentiment, and this week's five prints show just how differently that's playing out company by company.
ROCKET LAB (RKLB)
Rocket Lab's quarter should have been an unambiguous win. Revenue hit $234.1 million, a record, up 62% year over year, and backlog reached $2.36 billion, also a record, up 137% from a year ago. Net loss narrowed to roughly $49 million from $66 million. The stock fell anyway, after CEO Peter Beck's commentary on balancing Neutron's launch timing against a smooth ramp toward the vehicle's tenth flight reopened doubt about whether the rocket debuts before year-end as guided. The bigger story of the week was the Iridium acquisition, which cleared three regulatory milestones in quick succession: the antitrust waiting period expired on August 12, Rocket Lab filed its Form S-4 registration statement with the SEC, and FCC applications to transfer Iridium's satellite licenses were submitted on August 10. On financing, Rocket Lab is carrying a $3.6 billion bridge loan commitment it intends to refinance with a mix of permanent debt and equity. Cantor Fitzgerald raised its price target to $122 from $96, framing Neutron as the most direct competitive threat to Falcon 9 once it flies, while BofA held its target at $115. Ark Invest's Cathie Wood added roughly $23 million of stock following the print.
AST SPACEMOBILE (ASTS)
AST SpaceMobile's earnings landed inside a bigger story: the company told regulators it plans to begin direct-to-cell service in the UK with Vodafone imminently, and it reaffirmed a 2026 revenue outlook of $150 million to $200 million while targeting close to $1 billion in its first full year of commercial service, with 45 satellites planned by early 2027. The print itself split the analyst community almost evenly. Within a single morning, BofA and UBS cut their targets, Piper Sandler trimmed its number slightly, and Cantor Fitzgerald raised its target to $90 from $80. The stock's average target across 18 analysts now sits at $88.09, little changed on net from where it started the month. The move followed AST's early-August BlueBird launch, which put three more of its larger second-generation satellites into orbit and fed directly into expanded integration testing with Vodafone, Orange, Telefónica and Deutsche Telekom in Europe.
INTUITIVE MACHINES (LUNR)
Intuitive Machines produced the widest gap of the week between headline quality and stock reaction. Revenue of roughly $206 million missed consensus near $224 million, and the loss per share came in twenty cents worse than expected. That overshadowed a genuinely strong underlying quarter: revenue still grew more than 300% year over year, backlog hit a record $1.8 billion, up $1.5 billion since the end of 2025, and the company had already booked $300 million of new business in the current quarter across commercial, civil and national security customers. Management held its full-year revenue outlook at $900 million to $1 billion and guided to positive adjusted EBITDA for the year. The stock still fell as much as 16% intraday before closing down roughly 9%, a reaction that fits a pattern: Intuitive Machines has missed estimates in three of its last four quarters, and investors have grown conditioned to treat the headline miss as the story regardless of what sits underneath it. The quarter also brought fresh defense diversification, with L3Harris selecting the company to build eighteen spacecraft platforms for a Space Development Agency missile-tracking constellation under the Golden Dome program.
VIRGIN GALACTIC (SPCE)
Virgin Galactic's quarter told the same story from a different angle. Net loss narrowed to roughly $56 million from $67 million a year earlier, free cash flow improved by about 20%, and the company raised $134 million through an at-market equity program while cutting more than $90 million of principal off its 2027 and 2028 notes. Demand looked genuinely healthy: the company's latest $750,000 ticket tranche sold out ahead of schedule, adding more than $50 million to expected future revenue, and its astronaut community passed 700 members. None of that mattered next to the headline that the first commercial spaceflight has slipped from the fourth quarter of 2026 to February 2027, which management attributed to the time needed to finish hundreds of small installation tasks rather than any expansion of scope. Shares fell close to 12% in after-hours trading. The sharper concern sat underneath the delay: year-end cash could fall as low as $65 million, triggering a formal going-concern warning in the company's SEC filings, with negative free cash flow guided through at least the end of 2026.
SPIRE GLOBAL (SPIR)
Spire's quarter was the fifth earnings print of the week and the least discussed, despite a genuinely mixed picture. Revenue came in at $18.0 million, down 6% year over year on the divested maritime business but ahead on an apples-to-apples basis, and the loss per share beat estimates by two cents. Management reaffirmed full-year revenue guidance of $75 million to $85 million and pointed to core, ex-maritime revenue growth of 42% to 61% for the year. Adjusted EBITDA losses narrowed 16% year over year and improved 15% sequentially, with cash usage down 32% from a year ago. The company ended the quarter with $91.7 million in cash and no debt. Despite the beat-and-reaffirm combination, the stock closed lower on the day, continuing this week's pattern of solid underlying execution failing to translate into a positive reaction.
THE REST OF THE SECTOR
Globalstar didn't report this week, but an insider sale drew attention: a company officer sold roughly $1 million of stock on August 10, several days after the company's August 6 print showed revenue declining year over year and suspended forward guidance pending its pending Amazon acquisition. BlackSky landed a seven-figure subscription contract and picked up an upgrade to Buy at Clear Street this week, building on its early-August earnings beat, even as Jefferies trimmed its own target on valuation grounds. MDA Space continued generating follow-through coverage on its $474 million expansion of the Telesat Lightspeed contract from the prior week, part of a broader Canadian military push into Arctic satellite communications running into the billions of dollars. Firefly Aerospace extended a multi-launch agreement using its upgraded Alpha configuration and picked up a roughly $94 million ground-radar digitization award from Space Systems Command. Planet Labs and Voyager Technologies had no fresh company-specific news dated to this window; both last reported in late July and the first week of August respectively. Momentus reports its own second-quarter results next Tuesday, August 18. And SpaceX's lockup story isn't finished: a second, larger tranche of insider shares is due to unlock within days, meaning the real test of whether this week's rally holds is still ahead rather than behind.
Takeaway: Five prints, five drops, and one stock up double digits without reporting anything at all. That's not noise. It's the same signal from two weeks ago showing up in reverse: this sector has stopped trading as a single basket-level bet and started trading on company-specific execution, whether that's a rocket's launch date, a lander's backlog conversion, or a spaceplane's cash runway. What that means for how each name should actually be priced going into the back half of August is the subject of this week's deep dive.
BROKER PULSE
🚀 Consensus prices
Live prices for all names below at Orbit Alpha Markets
SPACEX (SPCX) · Avg target $235.69
ROCKET LAB (RKLB) · Avg target $112.26
AST SPACEMOBILE (ASTS) · Avg target $79.66
PLANET LABS (PL) · Avg target $40.10
INTUITIVE MACHINES (LUNR) · Avg target $32.33
GLOBALSTAR (GSAT) · Avg target $90.00
FIREFLY AEROSPACE (FLY) · Avg target $45.80
MDA SPACE (MDA) · Avg target $44.29
REDWIRE (RDW) · Avg target $14.50
VIASAT (VSAT) · Avg target $101.44
BLACKSKY TECHNOLOGY (BKSY) · Avg target $38.42
VIRGIN GALACTIC (SPCE) · Avg target $3.52
SPIRE GLOBAL (SPIR) · Avg target $20.88
LAUNCH WATCH
🔭 Launches that could move your portfolio
Full launch calendar with live status at Orbit Alpha Launches
Aug 16 · SpaceX – Falcon 9 / Globalstar (Cape Canaveral)
Aug 16 · CASC – Long March 12 (Wenchang, China)
Aug 17 · CASC – Unconfirmed Vehicle (Taiyuan, China)
Aug 19 · SpaceX – Falcon 9 / Starlink (Vandenberg SFB)
Aug 20 · SpaceX – Falcon 9 / Starlink (Cape Canaveral)
Aug 22 · SpaceX – Falcon 9 (Vandenberg SFB)
Aug 24 · CASC – Long March 5 (Wenchang, China)
Aug 25 · SpaceX – Falcon 9 (Cape Canaveral)
Aug 25 · SpaceX – Falcon 9 (Vandenberg SFB)
Aug 27 · Arianespace – Ariane 6 (Guiana Space Centre)
Aug 30 · SpaceX – Falcon Heavy (Kennedy Space Center)
Late Aug · Rocket Lab (RKLB) – Electron (New Zealand)
Late Aug · South Korean ADD – GYUB, first sea-based test (Jeju Island)
Late Aug · Isar Aerospace – Spectrum (Andøya Space, Norway)
SENTIMENT SIGNAL
🎯 INSIDE JEDI: THE £1.7 BILLION FUND BEHIND EUROPE'S PURE-PLAY SPACE TRADE
VanEck's Space Innovators UCITS ETF is the largest dedicated space fund available to UK and European retail investors. As of 11 August 2026, it held net assets of $1.71 billion, according to Yahoo Finance's LSE-listed data. Most of this newsletter's UK subscriber base likely holds it, watches it, or has at least seen the ticker cross their screen. Here's what's actually inside it, what it costs, who runs it, and how it's actually performed.
WHO'S BEHIND IT
JEDI is a sub-fund of VanEck UCITS ETFs plc, an Irish umbrella investment company registered with the Central Bank of Ireland. VanEck itself was founded in New York in 1955 by John van Eck and remains privately owned by the van Eck family. Current CEO Jan van Eck, John's son, joined the firm in 1991 and founded its ETF business in 2006 before becoming CEO in 2010. VanEck's European operation, which oversees JEDI, is run by Martijn Rozemuller, who founded the Netherlands' first ETF provider, Think ETFs, before it was acquired by VanEck. As a passive, index-tracking fund rather than an actively managed one, there's no single stock-picking manager behind it. Day-to-day replication is handled by VanEck's Equity ETF Investment Management Team, and the fund's assets are held by its depositary, State Street Custodial Services (Ireland) Limited.
WHAT IT ACTUALLY TRACKS
JEDI aims to replicate the MarketVector Global Space Industry Screened Index, built and maintained by MarketVector Indexes GmbH, a wholly owned VanEck subsidiary, with Solactive AG acting as calculation agent. It was the first MVIS-branded index to apply ESG screening criteria when it launched in 2022. The index requires a company to generate at least 50% of its revenue from space-related products and services, spanning space exploration, rockets and propulsion, satellite equipment, and communications solutions, before it qualifies for inclusion; a holding gets removed if that revenue share later drops below 25%. It rebalances quarterly, and JEDI is currently the only ETF that tracks it, meaning there's no direct passive competitor replicating the same basket at a different price. The fund uses full physical replication, buying the actual shares that make up the index rather than tracking it synthetically.
WHAT IT COSTS
JEDI's net expense ratio is 0.55% a year. As an accumulating share class, it doesn't distribute income; any dividends the fund receives from its holdings are reinvested directly, which compounds returns and is irrelevant for tax purposes to anyone holding it inside an ISA or SIPP.
HOW IT'S ACTUALLY PERFORMED
As of 11 August 2026, per Yahoo Finance's trailing-returns data on the London listing: JEDI was up 31.62% year to date, 84.31% over the trailing 1 year, and 53.55% over the trailing 3 years. Separately, the 5-year price chart shows a cumulative gain of 351.78% over that window. The fund's price on 11 August stood at $91.82, down 0.75% on the day, against a net asset value of $89.96. That day-to-day gap between price and NAV is normal for an ETF and reflects trading supply and demand rather than fund performance. The 52-week range, $46.31 to $141.24, gives a sense of how wide the swings have been: the fund has traded at roughly three times its low within the past year.
WHAT'S ACTUALLY INSIDE IT
Per Yahoo Finance's most recent snapshot of the London listing, JEDI's top 10 holdings account for 64.47% of total assets: Viasat at 9.72%, AST SpaceMobile at 7.00%, Globalstar at 6.72%, EchoStar at 6.62%, Rocket Lab at 6.41%, Iridium at 6.05%, Melrose Industries at 5.93%, MDA Space at 5.71%, Planet Labs at 5.61%, and Taiwan's WNC Corporation at 4.70%. That list overlaps heavily with the names covered in this newsletter every week, though it's worth flagging one name that doesn't usually come up here: Melrose Industries, the UK-listed aerospace and defence engineering group (parent of GKN Aerospace), sitting at nearly 6% of the fund. Its presence is a reminder that JEDI's "space" mandate stretches into aerospace supply chain and components businesses, not just pure launch and satellite operators. By sector, the fund is 45.82% industrials, 29.55% communication services and 24.63% technology, with no exposure at all to property, consumer, materials, financials, utilities, energy or healthcare.
THE ESG SCREEN, AND WHAT IT KEEPS OUT
JEDI carries an Article 8 classification under EU sustainability disclosure rules. Companies are screened out for violating UN Global Compact principles, or for generating meaningful revenue from controversial weapons, fossil fuel extraction, nuclear power, civilian firearms or tobacco. That's a structural choice, not a footnote: it shapes the fund toward commercial space, communications and aerospace supply names rather than the diversified defence primes that dominate rival products like ARK's newer Space & Defence Innovation UCITS ETF.
ONE THING WORTH KNOWING: VANECK HAS A SECOND SPACE ETF NOW
In May 2026, VanEck launched a separate, US-listed fund called WARP, tracking a different, more narrowly defined index that applies a stricter pure-play revenue threshold with a modified float-adjusted weighting. WARP isn't available to UK ISA or SIPP investors and isn't a JEDI substitute, but it signals VanEck now runs two distinct space strategies side by side, a broader industry index in JEDI and a tighter pure-play index in WARP.
THE ISA CONTEXT
Because JEDI is a UCITS fund domiciled in Ireland with a PRIIPs Key Information Document, it's treated as a qualifying investment by every major UK ISA and SIPP provider, meaning any gains sit permanently outside UK capital gains tax and income tax when held inside one. ARK launched a UCITS version of its own space-and-defence fund in October 2025, but that fund remains a fraction of JEDI's size. For now, JEDI is the largest and longest-running way for a UK or European investor to hold diversified space exposure inside a tax-advantaged account.
Previous: Issue 17: $7.8 billion in revenue. The only space stock that fell. · Next: Issue 19: A Second Unlock, a Split Verdict, and a Sector-Wide Selloff