SpaceX Stock Jumps 7% on $14.6 Billion Q3 Revenue as Tesla…

SpaceX stock jumped 6.89% to $157.97 in post-market trade after the company reported third quarter revenue of $14.58 billion, roughly $1.6 billion above the consensus bar. Diluted earnings came in at $0.35 a share against analyst estimates clustered between 13 and 17 cents.

The quarter also delivered the merger news the market had been pricing all month. Musk told the earnings call that Tesla and SpaceX have each formed an independent committee to study a combination, then spent several minutes talking down the odds of one being agreed.

Revenue of $14.58 Billion Cleared the Consensus Bar by $1.6 Billion

Revenue grew 161% from $5.58 billion a year earlier, according to the shareholder letter SpaceX furnished to the SEC as Exhibit 99.1 to an 8-K filed on 20 October. Analysts polled by LSEG had looked for about $12.74 billion, and third-party previews ranged up to $13.0 billion, so the print cleared the top of that range by more than $1.5 billion.

Every profitability line turned positive at the same time, which is the part that matters most for SpaceX stock. Income from operations reached $2.79 billion against a $273 million loss a year ago, net income was $4.40 billion against a $1.05 billion loss, and adjusted EBITDA rose 306% to $8.81 billion. The shares had fallen into the print after a selloff that left them in the $140s last week, which is part of why the reaction was as sharp as it was.

Super Intelligence Grew 830% and Overtook Starlink as the Biggest Segment

The Super Intelligence segment, which SpaceX renamed from Artificial Intelligence this quarter, booked $7.56 billion of revenue against $813 million a year ago. Connectivity brought in $5.25 billion and the Space business $1.77 billion, so the unit that was smallest twelve months ago is now larger than the other two combined. Advertising contributed $538 million of the SI total and solutions and infrastructure the remaining $7.02 billion.

Starlink kept compounding underneath all of that, and it is still the business paying the bills. Consumer subscribers reached 13.6 million at the end of September, up 1.6 million in three months, with monthly ARPU 5% higher at $69 and coverage across 174 countries. Connectivity income from operations rose 99% to $2.37 billion, and that cash flow is what underwrites SpaceX stock while SI scales.

Investor Takeaway

Musk Moved His $1 Trillion Revenue Target Forward by Two Years

SpaceX issued no formal guidance, so the closest thing holders of SpaceX stock were given is a post Musk published on X after the numbers landed. Quoting his own June post that the company “might be able to reach approximately $1T revenue in 2030,” he wrote that “$1T in SpaceX revenue in 2028 is no longer impossible.”

The third quarter annualizes to about $58 billion, so hitting that mark in 2028 would mean revenue multiplying roughly seventeen times in two years. Nothing in the letter underwrites it, and the nine-month figure of $27.08 billion is the base anyone marking SpaceX stock against that target should work from.

Nine-Month Capex of $48.1 Billion Ran Almost Four Times Operating Cash Flow

Capital spending reached $19.59 billion in the quarter, of which $16.44 billion went into SI. Across the first nine months the company spent $48.07 billion against $13.10 billion of cash generated by operations, a gap it has covered with the $85.68 billion raised at the June listing and $51.83 billion of new debt. That funding requirement is the clearest bear case on SpaceX stock.

Nameplate compute reached 1.7 gigawatts at the end of September, up from 1.4 GW in June and 0.6 GW a year ago, as the COLOSSUS II buildout continued. Part of the demand behind that spend is contracted already, since the pre-IPO prospectus disclosed a Google agreement to lease 110,000 Nvidia GPUs at $920 million a month through June 2029. SpaceX closed the quarter with $51.29 billion of cash and $38.56 billion of marketable securities.

Space is the one segment that has gone quiet, and it is no longer what sets the direction of SpaceX stock. Revenue rose 6% to $1.77 billion on 12 customer launches, total launches fell to 35 from 44, and the segment posted a $7 million operating loss. Starship Flight 14 was the first to reach orbit and the first to carry revenue, delivering 26 Starlink V3 satellites with around ten times the downlink capacity a Falcon 9 Starlink launch adds.

Musk Called the Merger Process an “Odd Kabuki Dance”

Both boards have set up independent committees, and Musk said he is deliberately outside them. He described the arrangement as “this sort of odd kabuki dance where two groups of people are talking and I can’t be in the conversation”, and flagged that winning support from 50% of all outstanding Tesla shares would be “quite a high hurdle to achieve.” None of it reached a filing. The 8-K SpaceX submitted the same day covers its results under Item 2.02 and makes no mention of Tesla, a merger or a special committee.

Then he talked the odds down in front of an audience that had just bid SpaceX stock higher. “I do not think we should necessarily assume that a SpaceX and Tesla merger is a certainty. I think that would be overstating it,” he said, adding that the committees have not agreed terms for any transaction. Gene Munster of Deepwater Asset Management read it the other way and put the chance of a combination within two years at about 95%. The structural questions behind any deal, including the premium Tesla holders would need, are unchanged by the committees existing, and SpaceX has run this play before in absorbing xAI in February ahead of the listing.

SpaceX Stock Trades 17% Above Its $135 IPO Price

SpaceX stock closed Tuesday at $147.79, down 0.11% on the day and worth $2.01 trillion, before the after-hours move took it to $157.97. That leaves the shares about 17% above the $135 IPO price from 12 June and still below the $176 area they touched on 6 October.

Tesla reports on Wednesday, and the read-across between the two names now runs in both directions. Tesla delivered 486,532 vehicles in the third quarter, and the published bull and bear ranges for SpaceX stock were all built on the two companies trading apart.

Investor Takeaway