Orbit Alpha Issue 28 · 25 Oct 2026

SpaceX Turns Its First Profit, Then Meets Its Biggest Lockup Test Yet

Market Overview

🌎 SpaceX Turns Its First Profit, Then Meets Its Biggest Lockup Test Yet

This was a week where the sector's biggest name dominated the tape and almost everyone else fought for a sliver of attention. SpaceX posted its first profitable quarter as a public company on Tuesday, sending the stock up double digits and triggering a wave of analyst price target hikes, only to run straight into the largest lockup-expiration tranche of its post-IPO calendar two days later. Away from SPCX, the week's real substance showed up in contracts and regulatory wins rather than headline-grabbing swings: Globalstar cleared a major FCC hurdle for its next-generation satellite system, Viasat put a NASA-backed spacecraft into orbit, Planet Labs landed a NASA hyperspectral data deal, and Redwire signed a European infrastructure partnership. Rocket Lab and AST SpaceMobile both saw modest, constructive analyst attention after a rougher prior week.

SpaceX (SPCX)
SpaceX delivered its first quarterly profit as a public company on October 20, and the numbers were not close. Revenue hit $14.6 billion, up 161% year over year from $5.6 billion, beating Wall Street consensus of roughly $12.7 to $12.9 billion by close to $2 billion. Net income came in at $4.4 billion, reversing a $1.1 billion loss a year earlier, with diluted earnings per share of $0.35 and adjusted EBITDA of $8.8 billion, up 306% year over year. The Super Intelligence and AI segment, which includes revenue from Cursor and an advertising business, surged 830% to $7.6 billion. Starlink and connectivity revenue rose 69% to $5.2 billion on 13.6 million consumer subscribers, while the Space and Launch segment grew 84% sequentially to $1.8 billion across 35 missions flown in the quarter. The company spent $19.6 billion on capital expenditures, $16.4 billion of it on AI infrastructure, and ended the quarter with $51.3 billion in cash plus $38.6 billion in securities.

The stock jumped more than 12% on the news, touching an intraday high of $166.18 before settling in the $147 to $165 range. Analysts moved fast and moved big: JPMorgan's Doug Anmuth doubled his price target from $240 to $500 on October 21, projecting $254 billion in 2027 revenue and keeping an Overweight rating. Morgan Stanley reiterated Overweight with a $300 target the same day, though it also trimmed its fiscal 2026 EBIT forecast to $6.2 billion from $7.7 billion. Cantor Fitzgerald raised its target to $345 from $246, Bank of America moved to $275 from $235, Barclays to $300 from $254, and Wells Fargo to $274 from $214, all keeping bullish ratings. Macquarie's current call is Outperform.

Two trading days after the earnings beat, on October 22, roughly 1.3 billion shares, about 28% of the stock's locked-up float and the single largest tranche on the post-IPO unlock schedule, became eligible to trade. SpaceX shares fell about 9% that day, though the drop coincided with a broader tech sector selloff, making it hard to isolate the unlock's specific contribution. The stock rebounded on October 23, helped in part by reports that SpaceX is negotiating access to roughly 80,000 cellular towers for a planned direct-to-cell wireless network. A further, smaller tranche of about 328 million shares, roughly 7% of the float, had its restriction lapse on October 24, with those shares first tradeable on Monday, October 26, just after this issue's window closes. For a deeper look at the lockup mechanics driving these swings, see this week's Sentiment Signal.

On the hardware side, SpaceX confirmed plans to attempt its first-ever double catch of both the Super Heavy booster and the Starship upper stage on Flight 15, targeted for November. Elon Musk said in an October 20 interview that data from September's Flight 14 made a successful double catch "more likely than not," and COO Gwynne Shotwell said the company is in "significant constructive engagement" with the FAA over the license needed to cover the attempt, which had not yet been issued as of October 21. Separately, Musk pushed back publicly on an estimate from a NASA safety panel member that roughly 22 Starship tanker launches would be needed to refuel the company's lunar lander ahead of a crewed Artemis IV landing, calling the figure "way too high" and putting his own estimate at six to eight launches. SpaceX has been awarded roughly $4.04 billion across two NASA contracts for the lunar lander work. The week also brought renewed friction over Starlink and Starshield access for Ukraine, with Ukrainian officials saying high-speed drone operations were still losing connectivity despite claims the service had been restored.

Rocket Lab (RKLB)
Rocket Lab launched its 98th Electron mission on October 21, carrying three HAWK satellites for HawkEye 360's radio-frequency intelligence and maritime-tracking constellation, the company's 19th Electron launch of 2026 and third dedicated to the HawkEye 360 program. The company also confirmed on October 20 that it will report third-quarter results on November 9 after market close. Both items are routine positives rather than market movers; the sharper story for RKLB, a roughly 10% share price drop tied to a Neutron rocket delay to 2027 after voids were found in the first-stage propellant tank, and a related sector-wide pullback alongside AST SpaceMobile, happened the prior week and is not this week's news.

AST SpaceMobile (ASTS)
AST SpaceMobile shares had fallen 18.6% over the week through Monday, October 19, against a Nasdaq 100 decline of just 3.7%, and Roth MKM used that weakness to reaffirm a Buy rating and $108 price target on October 20, implying roughly 158% upside. The firm pointed to AST's first-mover position in direct-to-device broadband, its tier-one carrier partnerships, and management's plan to have roughly 45 BlueBird satellites in orbit by early 2027 with revenue approaching $1 billion in the first full year of commercial service. Yahoo Finance's analyst ratings module separately shows Scotiabank upgrading the stock to Outperform on October 23, raising its target to $55.70 from $50.80. The move adds to a mixed but constructive week of analyst sentiment after a rough prior week driven by a Piper Sandler downgrade tied to SpaceX's expanding direct-to-cell ambitions.

Intuitive Machines (LUNR)
Intuitive Machines reshuffled its board this week, with director Michael Blitzer resigning and Dr. Christopher Scolese, a former director of the National Reconnaissance Office and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, appointed to the vacated Class II seat and named chair of a newly created Conflicts Committee. The change was disclosed in an October 21 SEC filing and confirmed in a company press release the following day. Separately, a single aggregator reported that Cathie Wood's ARK Invest bought roughly 121,000 LUNR shares on October 20, a figure we could not independently corroborate against a second source, so treat it as directionally interesting rather than confirmed.

Redwire (RDW)
Redwire and Bulgaria-based satellite maker EnduroSat signed a memorandum of understanding on October 21 aimed at strengthening European space infrastructure, with reporting pointing to orbital data centers, defense applications, and satellite-navigation work as likely focus areas. Terms were not disclosed. The announcement was corroborated across the company's own newsroom, a Yahoo Finance syndication, and independent commentary, making it the week's most solidly sourced item for the stock.

Viasat (VSAT)
Viasat's "Maxwell" spacecraft, built by Rocket Lab, launched October 20 on SpaceX's Bandwagon-5 rideshare mission from Cape Canaveral, supporting two NASA Communications Services Project contracts worth a combined $81 million as the agency works to transition away from its aging TDRS relay fleet. The spacecraft will provide Ka-band links via ViaSat-3 and L-band terminals, with on-orbit testing running through March 2027; it is Viasat's second CSP demonstration after a first flight in November 2025. Separately, an aggregator reported that CFO Garrett Chase sold 4,000 shares worth roughly $235,000 on October 20 under a pre-existing 10b5-1 trading plan, a routine disclosure we could not independently verify against the underlying SEC filing this week.

Planet Labs (PL)
Planet Labs had a genuinely active week. Berenberg reiterated a Buy rating and $25 price target on October 20 following management discussions, citing satellite-services renewals and growing sovereign, defense, and AI-driven commercial demand; shares rose roughly 2.7% in premarket trading the next morning partly on that note. On October 21, Planet's federal subsidiary was awarded a NASA Commercial Satellite Data Acquisition task order to evaluate Tanager hyperspectral data, covering more than 250,000 square kilometers for uses spanning atmospheric composition, biodiversity, hydrology, and disaster response; the outcome will help determine whether NASA makes the data available government-wide, though no dollar figure was disclosed. The company also launched its Pelican-12 satellite, its 25th satellite to orbit in 2026, on SpaceX's Bandwagon-5 mission, carrying a prototype SES Space and Defense inter-satellite communications package and an onboard Nvidia Jetson AI processor.

Globalstar (GSAT)
The week's clearest regulatory win belonged to Globalstar. The FCC authorized the company's third-generation C-3 satellite system for U.S. operations on October 19, covering a planned constellation of 48 low-Earth-orbit satellites plus six in-orbit spares and new ground antennas across Alaska, Hawaii, Nevada, Texas, Florida, and Puerto Rico. The system, built by MDA Space and intended to enable direct-to-device smartphone connectivity, is expected to begin launching in 2027. CEO Paul Jacobs called the approval "a critical step forward." The authorization matters in part because it de-risks a piece of Amazon's pending roughly $11.6 billion acquisition of Globalstar, announced in April, under which Amazon's Leo satellite service would continue powering Apple's existing Globalstar-based device features; that acquisition itself is not new this week and is noted here only as context.

Firefly Aerospace (FLY)
Firefly Aerospace announced on October 21 that it had completed the preliminary design review for the Elytra spacecraft it is building under NASA's MoonFall program, a subcontract originally awarded in May for $75 million to carry NASA JPL-built drones to the Moon's south pole. The review, which covered structure, thermal, propulsion, guidance and navigation, and communications systems, was signed off by NASA and JPL participants, with the company noting it came less than four months after contract award. The next milestone is a critical design review ahead of hardware build, with MoonFall targeted to launch by late 2028. The disclosure comes from Firefly's own investor-relations release; we could not find independent trade-press pickup of the item this week, so treat it as a confirmed company milestone rather than independently verified news.

Takeaway
The headline story was SpaceX's whiplash week, a genuine profit beat followed almost immediately by its biggest test of share-unlock supply and demand to date, with Wall Street responding by raising targets even as the stock absorbed real selling pressure. Beneath that, the sector's smaller names delivered a string of concrete, if unspectacular, wins: Globalstar's FCC clearance, Viasat's and Planet's NASA-linked launches, and Redwire's European partnership all point to steady commercial and government demand for space infrastructure even in a choppy tape. Watch for SpaceX's next lockup tranche on December 8, Rocket Lab's November 9 earnings, BlackSky's and Firefly's early-November reports, and any firming of a date for Starship's first double-catch attempt, still targeted for November but awaiting an FAA license as this issue went to press.

Consensus Prices

Launch Watch

• Oct 25 · CASC · Long March 8A · Unnamed payload · Wenchang, China
• Oct 26-27 · SpaceX · Falcon 9 · Starlink Group 15-16 · Vandenberg SFB, CA
• Oct 28-30 · SpaceX · Falcon 9 · Starlink Group 15-18 · Vandenberg SFB, CA
• Late Oct (TBD) · ISRO · GSLV Mk II · NVS-03 (IRNSS-1L) navigation satellite · Satish Dhawan Space Centre, India
• Late Oct (TBD) · ISRO · SSLV · AayulSAT-1A, first commercial SSLV flight · Satish Dhawan Space Centre, India
• Late Oct (TBD) · CASC · Long March 12A · Second test flight · Jiuquan, China
• NET Oct 29 · ULA · Vulcan Centaur VC6L · Amazon Leo (Kuiper) satellites, Cert-3 · Cape Canaveral SFS, FL (date shown firm on one tracker, listed only as "NET November" on others; unresolved)
• NET Nov 3-4 · Rocket Lab · Electron · "The Sea God Surveys," QPS-SAR-20 for iQPS · Mahia, New Zealand
• NET Nov 5 · SpaceX · Falcon 9 · Starlink Group 15-21 · Vandenberg SFB, CA
• NET Nov 5 · SpaceX · Falcon 9 · NROL-195, classified NRO payload · Vandenberg SFB, CA
• NET Nov 10 · Rocket Lab · Electron · "The Mountain God Rises," QPS-SAR-19 for iQPS · Mahia, New Zealand
• NET November (no firm date) · SpaceX · Starship V3 · Flight 15, first attempt to catch both booster and ship · Starbase, TX. One outlet has floated Nov 8; not corroborated, and the FAA license was still pending as of Oct 23.

Orbit Focus

🎯INSIDE SPACEX'S LOCKUP GAUNTLET: WHAT A 28% SHARE UNLOCK REVEALS ABOUT THE FLOAT

SpaceX spent four months after its June 2026 IPO building a reputation as the market's most tightly held story, and this week it tested exactly how tight that grip really is. On October 20, the company posted $14.6 billion in quarterly revenue, up 161% year over year, and its first GAAP net profit as a public company, $4.4 billion. Two trading days later, roughly 1.3 billion shares, about 28% of the stock's locked-up float and the largest single tranche on its post-IPO unlock calendar, became freely tradeable. The stock fell about 9% that day. By the end of the week it had mostly recovered. Untangling how much of that round trip was earnings, how much was supply, and what it says about the months still ahead is the most useful thing a shareholder can do with this story right now.

The schedule, reconstructed. SpaceX's prospectus set up a staggered release of locked-up shares rather than a single cliff. The first major tranche, up to 911.5 million shares, or 20% of the float, came on August 6, two days after the company's first earnings report as a public company. A separate bonus tranche of 455.8 million shares, tied to the stock closing above $175.50, never triggered. Smaller tranches of roughly 7% each followed on August 20, September 9, September 24, and October 9. Then came this week's outlier: October 22's 28% release, by far the largest since the IPO, timed two trading days after the second earnings report, followed by another 7% tranche whose restriction lapsed October 24, with those shares first tradeable the following Monday. A final standard-block release is scheduled for December 8, though the exact share count was not disclosed in any source we could find. The real cliff is further out: roughly 6.4 billion shares held by Elon Musk and other core insiders remain under a 366-day lockup that does not expire until around June 2027.

Why the Street bought the dip anyway. What makes this week unusual is that the unlock and the earnings beat landed almost on top of each other, and analysts leaned hard into the earnings side of that collision. JPMorgan's Doug Anmuth doubled his price target to $500 from $240 on October 21, the day before the big tranche hit, citing the Super Intelligence and AI segment's 830% year-over-year growth and projecting $254 billion in 2027 revenue. Morgan Stanley held Overweight with a $300 target the same day, even while trimming its own 2026 profit forecast. Cantor Fitzgerald, Bank of America, Barclays, and Wells Fargo all raised targets into the unlock, not after it. That sequencing matters: it suggests the analyst community was pricing the fundamentals first and treating the unlock as a trading event to be absorbed rather than a reason to lower conviction. Whether that holds up once December's tranche and, eventually, next June's much larger insider release arrive is the open question for anyone underwriting the stock on a 12-month view.

The short interest data has a gap, and it matters. Short sellers have been a visible part of this stock's story since shortly after the IPO, when S3 Partners reported short interest of 219.3 million shares, about 34% of the float and $24.6 billion in notional value, in late July, a figure large enough that reporting at the time said it exceeded short bets against Tesla. That position has come down since: 173.6 million shares at the August 31 settlement date, equal to 2.81% of float, then 162.3 million shares at the September 15 settlement, 2.63% of float, then back up to roughly 181 million shares at the September 30 settlement. We could not find a short-interest print covering the October 15 settlement date, the one that would typically be disseminated right around October 23 or 24, squarely inside this week's window. That is a real information gap heading into a week that saw the single largest supply event of the unlock schedule, and it is worth watching closely once that data surfaces, because a meaningful short build into the October 22 tranche would tell a very different story than a short base that stayed flat or shrank.

What actually moved the stock, and what we still do not know. The roughly 9% drop on October 22 coincided with a broader technology-sector selloff that day, which makes it hard to say with confidence how much of the move was unlock-driven supply versus macro noise, a point even the reporting closest to the event acknowledged. The next day's partial rebound was attributed in part to reports that SpaceX is negotiating access to roughly 80,000 cellular towers for a planned direct-to-cell wireless network, an unconfirmed but potentially significant expansion of the Starlink business if it materializes. None of this changes the mechanical reality ahead: a smaller but still meaningful tranche is already loose as of October 26, a final standard-block release lands December 8, and the market will get at least two more chances before next June to see whether newly tradeable shares get absorbed quietly or show up as the kind of pressure seen this week.

Takeaway. SpaceX's first profitable quarter was genuinely strong, and Wall Street's response, a cluster of sharply higher price targets delivered in the same week as the largest lockup tranche yet, suggests analysts are willing to look through near-term unlock supply when the underlying growth story holds up. But the stock's ~9% single-day drop shows that supply still matters at the margin, and the missing October short-interest print leaves a real blind spot right at the moment it would be most useful. The next concrete test is December 8's tranche; the far bigger one, the roughly 6.4 billion insider-held shares unlocking next June, is still eight months away and will dwarf everything the stock has absorbed so far.

This newsletter is for informational purposes only and is not investment, legal, or financial advice. We believe our sources are reliable but can't guarantee accuracy or completeness, and all figures should be independently verified before you rely on them.

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