Two firms initiated coverage on SpaceX. That's the story. Two whole firms looked at a company valued at roughly $350 billion and decided this week was the week to tell you what they think about it.
SpaceX has been launching rockets for over two decades. Elon Musk has been making headlines every single day since 2018. But sure, *now* is when Wall Street needs to weigh in with price targets.
Both firms forecast gains for the first year to 18 months. Gains. For SpaceX. The company that already went from zero to monopolizing commercial space launch while Boeing was still trying to figure out how doors work. Real courageous call there.
Imagine being the analyst who got assigned this coverage. Your boss walks over. Says they need a SpaceX initiation report by Friday. You panic. You've never analyzed a rocket company. You don't know orbital mechanics. You don't know thrust-to-weight ratios. So you do what every analyst does: you assume 12% annual revenue growth, slap a 25x multiple on 2027 earnings, and call it a buy because the stock went up last year.
The retail traders will eat this up. They'll screenshot the price targets. Post them on Reddit. Argue about whether $420 per share is realistic or if we're going to $690 because of Starlink subscriber growth in Kazakhstan. Then they'll buy call options expiring in nine days and wonder why their account looks like the Challenger footage.
Here's what Wall Street analysts actually know about SpaceX: it goes up, Elon tweets, and their compliance department finally cleared them to publish something. That's the entire research process. The rest is just formatted guessing with a Bloomberg terminal open in the background.
Two firms initiated coverage, which means 47 more will copy their homework by next month and change the price target by $3 so it looks original.
Photo by Jérôme Boursier on Unsplash
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